Google to discontinue PHR service
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“When we launched Google Health, our goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information,” Brown wrote. “We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users.”
However, after several years, “Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would,” although there has been strong use among tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and fitness and wellness enthusiasts, he wrote. But the company wasn't able to translate that limited usage into more widespread adoption.
The Google Health site will continue to operate Jan. 1, 2012, and users can download their PHR information, print and save it or transfer it to other services that support industry-standard data formats for a year afterward. In the coming weeks, Google Health will enable users to directly transfer health data to other services that support the Direct Project protocol, Brown announced.
Any data that remains in Google Health after Jan. 1, 2013 will be permanently deleted, he stated.
“While we weren’t able to create the impact we wanted with Google Health, we hope it has raised the visibility of the role of the empowered consumer in their own care,” Brown wrote.
Click here to read Brown's blog post.