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Google Health was a disaster and there weren’t very many hospitals that adopted it in the end. Medical information record databases are notoriously siloed. Not

by nyxtom 6y ago

Google Health was a disaster and there weren’t very many hospitals that adopted it in the end. Medical information record databases are notoriously siloed. Not to mention I have a difficult time trusting the longevity of many of googles projects

reaperducer 6y ago
I work in healthcare, but I only build web sites and portals and things like that. The people who work on the data and records side have some of the hardest jobs in the company. I don't envy them. This feels like yet another case of Google thinking it can throw machines and algorithms at a problem and a solution will magically appear. It won't. Search is hard. Healthcare is harder. Way harder. Healthcare data is a never-ending log flume of exceptions, regulations, exceptions to regulations, and laws that change from week to week, or sometimes even day to day. And the data can sometimes be exceptionally dirty, in a way that only human intervention can clean it up. The only way it all gets managed is with people. And Google hates wetware. Its entire reason for being is to abstract away the humans and replace them with math. That may work good enough for e-mail, or games, but it doesn't work for people. And it certainly doesn't work for healthcare, where "good enough" means people die.
- thallium205 6y ago
  Only those in healthcare understand this. The thought of Google trying to pull data out of an Epic or an eClinicalWorks cracks me up.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    I would consider looking at who runs Google Health before making that statement. David Feinberg is one of the few people with the right experience that can pull Google in the right direction if they want to go into healthcare. https://health.google/our-team/ https://health.google/our-team/ https://www.blog.google/technology/health/david-feinberg-google-health/ https://www.blog.google/technology/health/david-feinberg-goo...
- harikb 6y ago
  While I see you have insider knowledge, your comment implies that the complexity in healthcare is due to software being “too careful because lives are at stake”. From my limited exposure, the “mess” is not in actually delivering medicine or medical equipment - it is the 50 different companies with entrenched interests to serve billing, manage data, patch work made on top of arcane old systems because people are afraid to touch old systems. I don’t see the “Big tech will write sloppy code and kill people” angle at all. Please help us understand with an example.
nyxtom 5y ago
Having actually worked at Medicity (later acquired by Aetna) I had the not so great priviledge of integrating Medicity's health record systems with both Google Health and Microsoft Healthvault. Neither gained the adoption rate that was anticipated by anyone. Medicity did a great job working towards more unified systems from all the siloed systems but it's (as others in healthcare have noted) notoriously complex and ever changing.

by nyxtom 6y ago

reaperducer 6y ago

I work in healthcare, but I only build web sites and portals and things like that. The people who work on the data and records side have some of the hardest jobs in the company. I don't envy them. This feels like yet another case of Google thinking it can throw machines and algorithms at a problem and a solution will magically appear. It won't. Search is hard. Healthcare is harder. Way harder. Healthcare data is a never-ending log flume of exceptions, regulations, exceptions to regulations, and laws that change from week to week, or sometimes even day to day. And the data can sometimes be exceptionally dirty, in a way that only human intervention can clean it up. The only way it all gets managed is with people. And Google hates wetware. Its entire reason for being is to abstract away the humans and replace them with math. That may work good enough for e-mail, or games, but it doesn't work for people. And it certainly doesn't work for healthcare, where "good enough" means people die.

thallium205 6y ago
Only those in healthcare understand this. The thought of Google trying to pull data out of an Epic or an eClinicalWorks cracks me up.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  I would consider looking at who runs Google Health before making that statement. David Feinberg is one of the few people with the right experience that can pull Google in the right direction if they want to go into healthcare. https://health.google/our-team/ https://health.google/our-team/ https://www.blog.google/technology/health/david-feinberg-google-health/ https://www.blog.google/technology/health/david-feinberg-goo...
harikb 6y ago
While I see you have insider knowledge, your comment implies that the complexity in healthcare is due to software being “too careful because lives are at stake”. From my limited exposure, the “mess” is not in actually delivering medicine or medical equipment - it is the 50 different companies with entrenched interests to serve billing, manage data, patch work made on top of arcane old systems because people are afraid to touch old systems. I don’t see the “Big tech will write sloppy code and kill people” angle at all. Please help us understand with an example.

nyxtom 5y ago

Having actually worked at Medicity (later acquired by Aetna) I had the not so great priviledge of integrating Medicity's health record systems with both Google Health and Microsoft Healthvault. Neither gained the adoption rate that was anticipated by anyone. Medicity did a great job working towards more unified systems from all the siloed systems but it's (as others in healthcare have noted) notoriously complex and ever changing.