First Read: Google Health disbanded? 2M iPads.

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 1, 2010        

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Google HealthGoogle pulled the plug on Google Health? Chilmark Research analyst John Moore penned a must-read piece on the possible dissolution of Google Health. According to Moore, rumor has it that the company has put the project into a “stasis” mode. Here’s more from Moore: “Rumors are now floating about that this lack of relevancy, this lack of a true commitment to Google Health has led to that oh so fateful executive decision – pulling the plug on Google Health and either letting the team go or reassigning them to other divisions within the organization. With maybe 25 employees max at any one time working on Google Health, this will not have major implications internally, but it may have some broad repercussions in the industry.” More

UPDATE: A Google spokesperson sent us a comment about the rumors: “We continue to invest in Google Health — we see it as a multi-year effort and think that finding ways to empower consumers help solve important problems, in health information and beyond, is very much in line with our corporate mission. As we demonstrated at HIMSS, we continue working to add new features and grow our ecosystem of new partners with Google Health, and will have more to share in the coming months. You can read more in our recent blog post.”

Where tech saves money in healthcare: ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn has a worthwhile write-up on which technologies can save money in healthcare: “Both The Internet of Things and Telepresence can improve productivity. In the case of Telepresence it can make specialists more available, reducing the need for specialists without top skills. In the case of The Internet of Things it can make highly-accurate self-administered tests possible.” Internet of Things is very much a mobile health concept. Read more here.

2 Million iPads in 2 Months: Yesterday, Apple announced that it had sold 2 million iPads since launching the device less than 60 days ago on April 3. The international launch over the weekend certainly helped: The iPad hit store shelves in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK over the weekend. More

1 Year Anniversary for Healthymagination: On the topic of milestones, GE Healthcare’s Healthymagination initiative is not entering its second year. Here’s a look back and year one: Review.

Tattoo for glucose monitoring: Medgadget reports that MIT’s chemical engineering departments has developed a new approach to glucose monitoring that uses a nanoparticle “tattoo” as a glucose sensor, which can then be continuously monitored by a device on the surface of the body. (A wireless adhesive sensor might pair well by the sounds of it.) More

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  • David Albert, MD

    Dana Blankenhorn of ZDNet does what many people do– extrapolate to unreality. Until specialist physicians are paid for telemedical consults (consult payments in person have been reduced), it will not happen generally in medicine. Oil companies can pay for telemedicine to fill their specific gap as can a number of other organizations (like the military) but US healthcare in general has not expanded the use of telemedicine since its heyday in teh 1990’s because of the issue of payment. Telepresence sounds great as a way to deliver specialist expertise to places which don’t have it but unless you can find a niche like the offshore oil field or the ICU (the VISICU model) then it will continue to languish.

  • David Albert, MD

    Where does all the mHealth data go if there is no PHR– into an enterprise EHR owned by a practice or an IDN?

  • http://wellescent.com/health_blog Wellescent Health Blog

    The tattoo for glucose monitoring is not new, but the use of wireless technology to read and transmit the values certainly is. If effective optics technology can accurately read the insulin levels represented by the color or luminescence changes of the ink and bypass human interpretation, direct measurement of these values will be available for patient self monitoring and remote monitoring alike.