- Google is building a search tool to help doctors and nurses navigate patient records.
- New details of the tool came to light after Google's work with the second-largest health system in the US was revealed. Some people raised questions about how Google will use the patient information that's being transferred to its cloud.
- Here's everything we know about the tool so far.
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Google has big plans to do for medical records what the search-engine giant did for practically every other kind of information.
The company is working on a search tool for patients' medical records, part of the work going on with Google's health unit. The unit pulls together the health projects from across Google, and in 2018 hired top doctor Dr. David Feinberg to lead the team.
The work came to light when the Wall Street Journal revealed that Google Health is quietly working with the second-largest health system in the US. The news drew scrutiny about how much private health information the tech giant had access to and how it might use it.
The health system, Ascension, is transferring the personal and medical information of 50 million patients onto Google's cloud network. In return, Google gains access to the data, Business Insider reported. Google has said "a limited number" of Google employees have access to full patient data as part of the deal, and both firms have said the arrangement complies with US privacy laws.
At the core of the work between Google and Ascension is a patient search tool, one that the Google Health team, led by Feinberg has been working on.
Before Google, Feinberg had been at Geisinger, a health system in Pennsylvania, since 2015. Prior to that, he served as CEO of UCLA's health system.
Feinberg's team is responsible for coordinating health initiatives across Google, ranging from the company's search engine and map products, to its Android smartphone operating system, to more futuristic offerings in areas like artificial intelligence.
We got more details of the work going on with patient sesarch in documents obtained by Business Insider as part of the work Google's doing with Ascension.
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According to a user guide for testers of the tool that was obtained by Business Insider, users can type in patient names to find matches, get an overview of a patient's information, view notes and lab reports, and get a view of patient results over time. The information in the user guide does not contain Ascension patient information, the document noted.
Here's what it looks like:
"What we thought we could accomplish is take the functionality that we know from organizing information and put it on top of your record," Feinberg said in a video released after news broke of the work Google was doing with Ascension.
For instance, if the doctor's curious if the patient had an MRI or if they've had a particular response to a medication, with Google's help they might be able to find it more conveniently.
"We will pull up all of that information from your record so that your doctor can spend more time with you, looking at you instead of looking in the computer," Feinberg said.
The search gives users the ability to search through patients within a health system - in this case Ascension - pulling up an overview of their health record with the ability to get a closer look at vitals or labs.
Much like Google Search, the forms are meant to correct for what medical providers are searching for.
The reports can also provide a view of a patient's lab results over time.
In a video posted on November 19, Dr. Alvin Rajkomar, a Google product manager and practicing physician, ran through a demonstration of the program.
In it, he highlighted the ability to make typos, see multiple charts for a patient drawing from multiple medical records, embed links to images like X-rays into notes, and find information in scanned documents through a finder tool.
"The technology is mindblowing," Feinberg said in a November video. "But if we don't have the trust of the doctor, the nurse, the mom, the dad, the elderly person, the patient, it doesn't matter how good the technology is we're not going to mess with this. We're going to do it the absolute best way possible. We're going to treat it with the respect that it deserves."
- Read more:
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