From the same engineers that designed Google Maps comes an online collaboration tool called Google Wave that attempts to answer the question: What would email look like if it was invented today, instead of some 40 years ago before the Internet even existed? Some have called Google’s answer to that question a Twitter-killer, but given the application’s status as an open-source project, it could have far greater implications.
We wonder if Google Wave will accelerate development of the Google Health PHR, which has yet to become fully functional on mobile phones, even though Google has stated their intent to develop its mobile functionality more fully.
First, a brief explanation of what Google Wave looks like today, according to Google: “In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content – it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”
We’re happy to hear Google Wave will come in two mobile flavors to start — Android and iPhone. But what is perhaps most exciting about Google Wave is that the company has announced the product well before it is ready for use by the general public. The reason? Google wants to let developers write applications and extensions to Wave for their own services, sites and blogs. It’s an open-source project right now with more than 4,900 developers potentially working on it.
Google Health already has an API available for developers. Google Wave could bring real-time collaboration between physicians and patients to the Google Health platform. Imagine being able to easily insert comments into every line of information in your medical health records. Google Wave could make it much easier for physicians to upload information into Google Health, too. If nothing else, the new application looks to greatly improve the user experience for Google Health users, should developers, whether inside the Googleplex or one of those 4,900 external developers with new Google Wave accounts, take advantage of the opportunity to make Google Health more collaborative.
How could Google Wave change Google Health? How could it change the way physicians collaborate with each other? With patients?
For more, take a look at the video demo of Google Wave from the Google I/O developers conference last week at the bottom of the official blog post from Google that announced Google Wave.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:17 pm
[...] This post was Twitted by Tweet4Traffic – Real-url.org [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 6:07 pm
[...] This post was Twitted by GoogleWaved – Real-url.org [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 7:06 am
[...] Article Brian Dolan, Mobihealthnews, 31 May 2009 SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “What happens when Google Wave hits Google Health?”, url: “http://articles.icmcc.org/2009/06/01/what-happens-when-google-wave-hits-google-health/” }); [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 9:00 am
[...] PHR tools is vital to the future of our health care system. As I said in my testimony there will be game changers but we need to see the potential of today’s Model T PHRs and build toward the Prius Hybrid [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
It’s all about organizing ALL patient-data (communication) logically, human understandable and on an easy/accessible way. By opening the API’s different sources can extract or add data to the stream (or wave). Google Wave can do all.
But also other products could do that, like dipity or mixin (shameless link here: http://zorgbeheer.blogspot.com/2008/08/dipity-for-healthcare.html )
June 1st, 2009 at 6:14 pm
[...] This post was Twitted by ChristineKraft – Real-url.org [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
[...] is ‘what impact will Google Wave have on the Google Health PHR?’, with Clay Shirky, Brian Dolan, Jay Parkinson and many others having posted pieces along the same lines in the last day or two [...]
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 am
From: HealthySpacesRx
Google introduced Google Wave last week to much acclaim. Several aspects of the product have tremendous potential for patient-centered communication online. The question becomes will the developer community respond during the developer period by building applications that takes advantage of the live collaboration tool or will HIPAA considerations nip the potential of Google Wave in the bud for the Health IT community?
http://is.gd/M3cx
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Good post Brian interesting connection with the Wave and the Google Health implications. It will be interesting to see if it comes to fruition.
With Google being so ad driven, I wonder how they plan to monetize around this. They have struggled with getting a return on YouTube and as ad dollars get tighter I wonder there is a grand plan or if they pull the plug on some things.
There is a good article in Fortune about their new CFO a few weeks ago.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/17/technology/lashinsky_google.fortune/index.htm
check out http://www.jlefevere.com for additional commentary.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Hi Jim,
While it probably won’t have any healthcare ramifications, my guess on the YouTube monetization front is that Google will finally leverage its acquisition of Neven Vision — the smart image/video recognition company – and sell ads related to the content Neven’s tech detects within the videos. Google bought Neven a few months before it bought YouTube. Maybe they had a monetization path even before they bought YT?
Fun fact: One of the founders of Neven became CEO of a company formed from the assets Google didn’t buy. That company is called iVisit and it has a really interesting “seeing eye” service for the visually impaired that uses image recognition and camera phones. We wrote an article about iVisit called Training Seeing Eye Phones…
http://mobihealthnews.com/1216/training_seeing_eye_mobile_phones/
The family tree of tech innovations is one big one, I tell you.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Re: Google Health already has an API available for developers. Google Wave could bring real-time collaboration between physicians and patients to the Google Health platform.
Q: You think your doctor is going to wait for you to tweet about a wave that is dedicated to your health and then quickly respond ? Can you call your doctor and get a reply more than 90% of the time in 5 minutes ? No. Doctors don’t have the time for this.
The benefits of “Google Waves” for doctor patient communication is NOT the real time aspect of it .. but the asynchronous aspects of it. It is only marginally better than another asynchronous tool : email. Hands up patients whom often email their providers ?
Re: Imagine being able to easily insert comments into every line of information in your medical health records.
Doctors aren’t going to allow it. For practical and medico-legal reasons. Believe me, patient’s microblogging in their spare time about their random problems won’t improve their health.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
unfortunately for Digidocsbag, it doesn’t matter if “doctors aren’t going to allow it” b/c people are going to do it – probably badly/ineffectually at first, but they will take charge of their health info, and the relationships of others to that info. The challenge for docs is how to respond effectively to the change.
June 5th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
[...] What happens when Google Wave hits Google Health? Google Health already has an API available for developers. Google Wave could bring real-time collaboration between physicians and patients to the Google Health platform. Imagine being able to easily insert comments into every line of information in your medical health records. Google Wave could make it much easier for physicians to upload information into Google Health, too. If nothing else, the new application looks to greatly improve the user experience for Google Health users, should developers, whether inside the Googleplex or one of those 4,900 external developers with new Google Wave accounts, take advantage of the opportunity to make Google Health more collaborative. [...]
September 9th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
[...] that may enable folks to reach this holy grail. Brian Dolan at mobilehealthnews says that Google Wave, an open-source tool for communication and collaboration, looks like a killer tool for enabling Google Health to do more in terms of provider-provider and [...]
September 9th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
[...] platforms that may enable folks to reach this holy grail. Brian Dolan at mobihealthnews says that Google Wave, an open-source tool for communication and collaboration, looks like a killer tool for enabling Google Health to do more in terms of provider-provider and [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I have been working on a project that combines Google Health ever since Google Wave launched. I produced a simple video @ http://www.ylabz.com. The product has lots of features still in stealth mode.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Thanks for the note, Ash. I linked to your video demo in an article today: http://mobihealthnews.com/4873/shorts-google-wave-itriage-diabetech/
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
[...] Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration which could have great potential in health improvement. [...]