A few blogs today are posting articles on the fact that Google Health has progressed to the point where it is being tested with up to 10,000 patient records at the Cleveland Clinic.

Uh .. excuse me … but when did we suddenly think it was a good idea for any 3rd party corporation to have any kind of access to our medical data? The fact of whether it is Google, Microsoft or any other corporation doesn’t change the fact that this data is probably the most important information you will produce in you lifetime.

It is bad enough that in the US the HMO’s have such a degree of control over your medical well being because they have total access to your medical history. The fact that the history of their manipulating your medical care based on that history is well documented should scare the hell out of everyone when the idea of corporations like Google; or Microsoft, decide it is a market they want to enter.

Therein lies an all important question that bothers me the most - what is the business model here? 

We have corporations with questionable privacy track records willing to provide server space to store potentially billions of medical records with all the associated costs of doing so. Except these are not non-profit corporations. So where is the return on investment here, where and how do these corporations satisfy shareholders with a profit margin.

Sure the big players in this service field are assuring all the parties involved that security of your data is of prime importance to them. Again though we are ignoring a couple fundamental aspects of human nature here. The first being the fact that what one company devises as security measures another company or person will find away around. There are no foolproof security measures no matter what spin companies might want to put on it. How long would it be before we see headlines showing up like the one in Washington Post Online where we read Banks: Losses From Computer Intrusions Up in 2007. If you think that it won’t happen then you are living in the dream world that these corporations are hoping you are.

Then there is the big question of implicit trust. When it comes to your medical well being and the management of it there is a certain level of trust that exists between you and your doctor. You expect that what is happening; or will happen, to you due to your medical condition is a strictly held matter of confidentiality between you and you doctor; or others that you implicitly include within that circle.

We have all seen and read on almost a daily basis what has happened in the U.S.; and can start to be seen in Canada as well, when your medical well being becomes a matter of a corporations financial profitability. You medical care suddenly is no longer controlled by you and your choice of doctor; or associated health practitioner. Now into this mix we want to bring multi-national corporations and trust them to keep our most personal data safe out of the goodness of their collective boardroom and shareholders hearts?

I agree that the time has come where we as individuals should have the right to be a part of our medical history management process but the idea of bringing in corporations like Google or Microsoft literally scares the hell out of me.

[graphic courtesy of Google Blogoscoped]

Conversation Tags: Google, Microsoft, healthcare, privacy