Google Health has teamed up with the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to pilot an online tool that helps patients build a visit plan for their upcoming healthcare visit. The project was detailed in a Google blog post published yesterday, but subsequently removed by the tech company until it was republished this afternoon with no substantial changes. In short, the tool will help patients plan for a medical appointment, based "not only on your medical history but also your current symptoms, medications, and upcoming exam dates and times."
"It's now easier than ever to give patients a precise description of the symptoms and expects of their next health care visit," Steve Selignah, director of healthcare at YouTube, wrote of the program. "Starting this week, Google will be automatically gathering patient feedback, including experience and questions from patient interviews and everything else you can imagine, and building and presenting optimization recommendations to you. So, all the patient mental energy you spend on rearranging your calendar to avoid that dentist appointment won't go to waste."
The Google Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center will be taking part in the initiative, effective December 1 and going into effect earlier than usual, potentially allowing users to perform their own site visits—perhaps resulting in better choices, as "you add all the other items your patient is probably most likely to be stressed about to schedule it all down," our colleague Annalisa Barbieri reports (Google received this unsolicited grant).
The new web tool is being targeted into primary care and hospital settings, and seems to be issuing "moderately useful" recommendations to most users, the company says. However, some statuses might be removed for a particular patient's records as their visits are elaborate and involve personal priorities.
The effort spans both groups of users, being used by cancer patients primarily—an average of 7.5 million visits a day, doubling the traffic of the cancer website itself. People who have diabetes, heart disease, eye problems, and other health issues are also engaging. https://t.co/JKfmA9UEurope — Miller Center (@MillerCTrk) September 22, 2017
During a Health Affairs blog session, Google may have mentioned that many of the new users were younger people, adding, "If you're on Facebook or any other social media platform, you're familiar with this kind of work."
Separately, what could have been a much bigger news out of the health care provider started with an announcement to be made today, where Alfredo Pequeña, the president of the Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Pilgrim Veterans Health Care System in Somerville, Massachusetts, is scheduled to give the keynote address at the world's largest code-sharing conference, the EMSI Global Summit. That conference will take place from September 22 to 23 in Toronto, Canada.
"It's now easier than ever to give patients a precise description of the symptoms and expects of their next health care visit," Steve Selignah, director of healthcare at YouTube, wrote of the program. "Starting this week, Google will be automatically gathering patient feedback, including experience and questions from patient interviews and everything else you can imagine, and building and presenting optimization recommendations to you. So, all the patient mental energy you spend on rearranging your calendar to avoid that dentist appointment won't go to waste."
The Google Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center will be taking part in the initiative, effective December 1 and going into effect earlier than usual, potentially allowing users to perform their own site visits—perhaps resulting in better choices, as "you add all the other items your patient is probably most likely to be stressed about to schedule it all down," our colleague Annalisa Barbieri reports (Google received this unsolicited grant).
The new web tool is being targeted into primary care and hospital settings, and seems to be issuing "moderately useful" recommendations to most users, the company says. However, some statuses might be removed for a particular patient's records as their visits are elaborate and involve personal priorities.
The effort spans both groups of users, being used by cancer patients primarily—an average of 7.5 million visits a day, doubling the traffic of the cancer website itself. People who have diabetes, heart disease, eye problems, and other health issues are also engaging. https://t.co/JKfmA9UEurope — Miller Center (@MillerCTrk) September 22, 2017
During a Health Affairs blog session, Google may have mentioned that many of the new users were younger people, adding, "If you're on Facebook or any other social media platform, you're familiar with this kind of work."
Separately, what could have been a much bigger news out of the health care provider started with an announcement to be made today, where Alfredo Pequeña, the president of the Harvard Medical School and the Director of the Pilgrim Veterans Health Care System in Somerville, Massachusetts, is scheduled to give the keynote address at the world's largest code-sharing conference, the EMSI Global Summit. That conference will take place from September 22 to 23 in Toronto, Canada.
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