The long awaited Google Health site has finally launched in beta. It took me about 5 minutes to get logged in and registered using my existing Google credentials, link up my Walgreen's account, identify a bunch of conditions, medications, allergies, procedures, etc.
I would have told you that my health was pretty good until I realized I had filled up an entire web page full of health related information. Yikes.
There is a fairly short list of partner organizations from which you can import medical records, but two of them (Minute Clinic and Walgreens) I frequent fairly regularly. I tried to get Minute Clinic to "link up" but apparently I was unable to track down the right combination of receipts and e-mails to authenticate properly. Walgreens however was a snap - I simply entered my userID and password, e-signed a release, and I was in business.
Within minutes, all of the prescriptions I have filled at Walgreens in the last several years were automatically added to my health record. What was even more impressive is that Google Health identified a potential drug interaction issue between certain drug combinations that I had taken together in the past - something my doctor had never mentioned.
There is also a small list of online service providers (including several PHR providers - who the heck needs more than one online medical record?) which I suspect will grow as more and more users provide data and a need for additional analysis tools, recommendations, etc. becomes realized.
Net-net, a pretty good launch for Google and I have a feeling this solution will be around for a long time to come.
