Google Health EMR: Rest In Peace

Google Health, mentioned in a previous post, will be closing the virtual doors on their electronic medical  record (EMR) application starting next year.  Health was a free user-friendly service to the public, much like Google's Maps, Docs and Picasa.  Although much to Google's dismay, Health didn't turn out to be nearly as successful as Maps.

In 2008, Google Health was created to as a means to put patients in the driver's seat of their own health and bodies.  Their objective was to "have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences" of their users.  Health features many easy to use health statistic monitors, ranging from the typical, like blood pressure and blood glucose to the more unusual, like breaths per minute, body temperature and vegetable servings eaten.  Health also allows patients to enter the usual PHR information such as medications, allergies surgeries and insurance info as well as a file upload function to add electronic medical records.

It certainly wasn't a fancy EMR application but it genuinely worked well and it's a shame to see it go.  The reason for its demise is because it didn't reach the broad audience that Google hoped it would and remained contained to a small computer-savvy audience.  In a recent Google blog post, they said it was a difficult decision to discontinue service to Health.  Service will be terminated on January 1st, 2012 but patients' medical records will still be available to download until January 1st of 2013.