Google Apps in modern Health Care

As we discovered in the previous article in this series on the impact of the World Wide Web on Healthcare,

Google is at the forefront of online applications.

These Web Apps have more than one promising feature that localized information storage solutions do not.

The most obvious is the ability to share and access information instantly from virtually anywhere.

Imagine many thousands of Spreadsheets ready to extract data from.They can be used by more than one person in different locations at all the same time.

No more emailing attachments which the receipient may not be able to view or store on his/her system.

No more fax machine battling and phone tagging or even hand delivering of documents.

How much time can be saved with proper implementation?

The phrase "Time is Money" comes to one's mind!

SF Bay Pediatrics has been using Google Apps since December for the kind of non-sensitive communications that keeps a clinic running smoothly.

Excerpt from Media submitted by John Furrier to PodTech.Net:

"Traditionally the health care industry is — I would go so far to say decades behind in terms of using information technology.The collaboration via emails,the exchange of information it’s very slow to travel when almost any physicians or groups get together that's what they talk about is is the fact that information only goes out by word of mouth and then our inter-office communications about calendar,spreadsheets or documents was paper.In my particular business where we all have to be somewhere among the various doctors and it changes to some degree and we all have to know where each of us is, if you forget your paper then you forget where you are and then you have to call somebody and find out..

The reason why I choose Google Apps for my domain was, it was a very cost-effective feature rich,it’s very good solution. It had almost everything we needed to get off the ground and it really only took about a half-a-day to implement and do it......."

-Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

In addition to Google's already impressive lineup of free online applications, the company also realized an entirely new service titled simply Google Health.Google Health is not what you may think. It is not a more innovative way to search for medical information.

It is much more than that. Google Health aims to become your One-Stop solution to store, track and (if desired) share your personal health data.

Google Health wins with a very user friendly interface and a gentle learning curve.
On the other side there are serious privacy concerns involved with your most personal data sitting somewhere on a machine in Goggle's maze of servers. Google assures you that they are doing everything possible to keep your private data safe. But it's no secret that there are many potential dangers.

For Example:

Hackers with bad intentions get better all the time.

Hurricane Katrina wiped out data to the point where people could not prove that they are who they claim to be.

Companies often do not honor their promises AND get away with it too often.

All things considered, Google Health has great potential, but ultimately it all depends on the user whether it will become a fixture in the way healthcare is dealt with on a daily basis.

You can take a quick tour at Google Health's website.

Diagnosis Google Health

Editor Rafe Needleman and News.com's Kara Tsuboi discuss the recent launch of Google Health,a service that allows users to compile their medical records online.

-Courtesy of CNET TV-

©2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.

Google Apps is a service from Google for using custom domain names with several Google products.It features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including: Gmail.Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites.

Because everything is online,you can access Google Apps securely from home,from your dorm office or even from your mobile phone.Implementing Google Apps from your office,school or group.It just requires a few quick changes to your domain settings.



Finally,after 5 years,Google Apps ( Gmail,Google Calendar,Google Docs and Google Talk ) are now out of beta.

According to Launch Event Washington,DC ( Matthew Glotzbach of Google Enterprise,Product Management Director ) ,said the change reflected Gmail’s maturity.He also said that different teams at Google had different criteria for what is beta meant,and that Google felt a need to standardize those.
“It is time to address the issue and bring the products out of beta”