The author is correct in suggesting that for any such system to work, there has to be involvement of health care providers and, without being reimbursed, they a

The author is correct in suggesting that for any such system to work, there has to be involvement of health care providers and, without being reimbursed, they are not likely to get involved. But I really feel Google Health failed because there simply wasn't enough consumer involvement. It could have continued as a system that allowed patients to monitor their own medication use, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. and analyze it for them and provide information for them to take to their physician - but that never happened. By and large, most consumers of healthcare in this country are the elderly, and a lot of the current generation is not going to go online and store and update all their healthcare data. I do some work in the long term care setting and recently I saw an older patient in this setting get an iPad. Some of the facilities have started talking about implementing wifi, a few already have because gradually some patients are beginning to demand it. When you see this becoming more widespread, you'll know there's a paradigm shift taking place, and that's when you'll see things like Google Health, or Microsoft Health Vault or Avado really start taking off.