Opinion: The demise of the online health service

After three years, Google has thrown in the towel and canned its Google Health online offering. Google cancelling a service is nothing new: the company is known for throwing projects at the wall and seeing what will stick.

Despite this commendable bent towards experimentation and innovation, it’s interesting Google’s Health service hasn’t taken off, despite being restricted to US citizens.

The rationale behind Google Health was simple. A patient, or their caregiver, stored vital health statistics in a universally accessible (to those with the correct permissions, of course) online web site. Microsoft has a very similar offering, called Microsoft Health Vault, however the software giant hasn’t made any noises about the success, or otherwise, of its site.

According to Google, the company wasn’t able to translate early adopter enthusiasm, particularly among tech-savvy patients, and fitness buffs, into wider, mainstream use.

The failure of the Google service opens up some interesting lines for discussion – it’s possible that a Google-like service could have worked with the forthcoming PCEHR, which uses a federated system of health information repositories coupled with a centralised indexing system.

It’s also possible people simply don’t want to bother tracking their own health information. After all, that’s what doctors are for, right?

Would you have used a third-party health information store for your personal information? Let us know in the comments.