IBM pitches in on Google Health

It's going to get easier for Google to keep tabs on your health.

The ubiquitous tech conglomerate has signed on to a new software product created by IBM with help from the Continua Health Alliance, an organization that promotes interoperability of medical devices. It'll take data from personal health monitoring devices, like blood sugar meters for diabetics, and share that directly with the patient in question's Google Health file (and the patient's physician, if he or she uses Google Health as well).

Other personal health record (PHR) services will also be able to use the IBM software, which was built partially on open-source standards.

"Our partnership with IBM will help both providers and users gain access to their device data in a highly simplified and automated fashion," Google Health director Sameer Samat said in a release. "IBM has taken an important step in providing software that enables device manufacturers and hospitals to easily upload recorded data into a PHR platform, such as Google Health."

Google Health, dedicated to the digitization of health records, launched in May. Microsoft has also planned a medical records service called HealthVault. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has made it clear that he plans to make digital health records part of his health care reform agenda.

[Drummer16161616]

These companies should be looking at more cost-effective solutions. We recently integrated a set of EMRs with a product called Mirth, which is an open source integration engine. It's a free, highly flexible and easy to use app, traits which most of its competition fails to deliver on. www.mirthproject.org is the site which luckily I stumbled upon during my effort, or otherwise I would have been out of a lot more $$$$.

[dascha1]

Hmm... let's see, yesterday's news was IBM and 'security holes' and today it's 'google health'. So maybe tomorrow it'll be 'lock st'health', right?

Voice matters not so far to them....

[francis_mullane]

Did I miss something - this article states "Microsoft has also planned a medical records service called HealthVault" .. as far as I know Microsoft has already released HealthVault.