Using Google Health for Managing Personal Health Records

If you are tired of gathering and organizing all of your medical records each time you have to share them with new doctors, hospitals and clinics then you have a new Google service that could be the perfect solution for you.

With Google Health (even in its beta release) you can keep all of your medical history in one private place and share it only with those who you have authorised to. Google has partnered with several hospitals, labs and pharmacies so you can import health records and prescriptions that you already can have with them. So in this way you won’t have to start all from scratch.

You can search for doctors and hospitals inside the same interface and add what you require to your medical contacts list, check for potential interaction between your medications and conditions, look the reference links that let you know more about your conditions and available treatments.

Disclosure is one of the main worries with this kind of sensitive information, but Google assures that all of your medical information will always be kept private and that they will never share it with any individuals or third parties. Besides you can be sure that your medical records will never appear in a search made on Google.

HealVault is another interesting option from Microsoft for managing personal health records, but I think that I prefer the simplicity of Google Health.