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 Today in Health it, this story is Google is going back to the future with a health record tracking tool for patients APMR. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current. And engaged VMware has been committed to our mission of providing relevant content to health IT professionals since the start.

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Alright onto today's story. I have two stories from Stat News. They're both on Google, so this is really a Google update. What are they doing, where are they going? And the first is Google is exploring a health record tool for patients. Lemme give you some of the story here. After 13 years, Google is coming back for patient health records, the tech giants that has launched an early user feedback program aimed at exploring how patients might,

Want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data. This actually is pretty interesting. They are taking a different approach, more of a humble approach, which is what we are encouraging big tech firms to do, and they are going out and listening and building based on their feedback. It goes on.

I think this is a perfect area for them to play, so it's going to be important to keep an eye on this. Google is currently recruiting about 300 patients from its health record study. From community health facilities and academic medical centers in Northern California, Atlanta, Chicago, who use EPIC as their medical record vendor, the study is only open to patients who use Android devices.

While the Tech giant is not directly partnering with any organizations for their program, they have reached out to some health systems to let them know UCSF, Alameda. Access Community Health Network in Chicago and others. Bob Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at UCSF and has advised Google on its health records work in a non-comp compensatory basis, told stat.

He was impressed but not blown away. It didn't knock my socks off, he said, but I think they're doing it in a thoughtful, measured and mature way. It seems like they're making progress. That's an interesting way for Bob to say that. Not exactly the most flattering way of saying that. The move follows Google's other recent health records work in Care Studio, a search tool that assists clinicians with navigating patient medical records.

Earlier this month, the Tech giant named Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Its second hospital partner joining the hospital chain Ascension as part of a pilot program. Effort drew widespread criticism over the organization's patient data sharing agreement, which Google and Ascension said was compliant with federal health data privacy rules.

All right, let me go back to that story because that's a another big move that I think we need to keep an eye on with regard to Google. And this is from Stat News from February 23rd. And the story is Google expands controversial pilot project using patient data. And if you remember back, what happened was Google and Ascension were found out.

They moved all this patient data into a Google platform and it came out in the news and everyone was sort of concerned that Google was getting access to millions of patient records through Ascension. And they had to backtrack and do the public relations thing of explaining to people that Google was not moving it into their search engine, but that they were using their search engine capability on top of medical records, on behalf of Ascension and on behalf of their clinicians to make it easier to use.

Lemme go into this story just a little bit. The tool, a kind of Google search for electronic medical records is called Google Care Studio and will now be available to roughly 250 clinicians in pilot mode. The software that lets clinicians search through reams of patient health record data without needing to know precisely where to look like the traditional Google search bar.

The tool automatically generates responses as doctor types inside of it. With the goal of retrieving relevant clinical information faster and more easily, the goal is to get the doctor or the nurse to spend less time at the computer so they can spend more time at the bedside. David Feinberg, the president of Google Health, told stat last fall.

Let's go down a little further now, as Google pushes ahead with the initiative, it is sharing some of its program. About 250 clinicians at Ascension facilities in Nashville, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida now have access to the early version of the Care Studio software up from 20 to 30 doctors initially given access as part of the Ascension Google deal.

According to the Google spokesperson, Google said it does not own. And it will not sell patient data involved in the project. Adding that the information cannot be used for advertising purposes and that the software adheres to hipaa and that's where they got in trouble and they are getting smarter about those things.

Going back to the other story, Wachter says he hopes to see Google ad more functionality to care Studio. For example, by smoothing its workflow integration and incorporating more features aimed at improving patient care Walker. Having advised technology companies on their health efforts since early two thousands, said he has witnessed a number of tech giants, including Google try and fail to create new versions of the electronic health record.

Looking forward. He hopes to see more companies take a similar approach to Google's most recent effort, which essentially builds assistive tools that layer on top of the existing EHR rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. I think we're entering an era where we have our EHR, but there are tools that help us use it.

In a better, faster, and safer way. All right, let's take a look at the, so what? The, so what is where I give my 2 cents on this? You know, why does this story matter? Big tech is quickly filling the gaps in the EHR space, in the EHR technology, a Google search for the medical record in a personal medical record, which transcends the EHR itself are just two instances of those initiatives.

I believe Big Tech has found its footing. Microsoft and Google are filling gaps and adding new capabilities to providers and payers. Apple is empowering the consumer and Amazon is well being Amazon and innovating around the edges until they see an opening, which will likely be where the insurance provider partnership is broken.

So what keep current on Big four know where they're at, especially with regard to providing technology that could significantly move the needle. For your provider patient experience and other aspects of the quadruple aim, also recognize where they might become a competitor or even enable competitors to come into your market, protect yourself and your data, but not at the expense of the patient experience or outcomes.

When you do that, you're starting down a path that is really the beginning of the end. Always make moves that are in the best interest of the patient. They don't act like consumers today in healthcare, but that's really about to change and you're gonna want to offer the best experience. And outcomes or someone else is going to, and that is the beginning of the end.

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