In June of 2011, Google announced that it would shut down Google Health (along with PowerMeter). “Both were based on the idea that with more and better information, people can make smarter choices, whether in regard to managing personal health and wellness, or saving money and conserving energy at home. While they didn’t scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult,” the company said at the time.

The company also said users would be able to download their data from Google Health through January 1, 2013. Now, here we are, and that’s only a couple weeks away. Google has been kind enough to email users to let them know that time is running out. The company is sending around an email with the subject line: “Important Google Health service announcement – action required”.

Here’s what it says:

This is an important Google Health service announcement. You are receiving this email because you have an active Google Health account.

The Google Health Team

While not quite related, Google is now showing Knowledge Graph results for medication info.

In the official announcement on the Inside Search blog, Roni Zeiger made a point to say, “The list is not authored by doctors and of course is not advice from medical experts.”

Given the importance of search relevancy when it comes to health-related queries, we sought a bit more info on the new feature from Google.

“The results we show are a reflection of content available across the web related to a given query for symptoms,” a Google spokesperson explains. “The lists are not checked manually by medical doctors. We’re hoping to simplify the search process for users by showing the conditions related to the symptoms they searched for in a single step.”

“This search feature will trigger for many symptom-related queries such as ‘cough’, ‘runny nose and cough’, or ‘knee pain when I stand up,’” she adds. “Triggering isn’t perfect and it’s a work in progress, so many symptom queries may not trigger this feature. The feature will not trigger for queries about health conditions such as ‘diabetes’ or ‘asthma’.”

“Our algorithms find the conditions most frequently associated with the symptoms in the query from the websites found in the results for that query,” the spokesperson says. “We only show conditions that are mentioned in connection with the given query in at least 10 websites — and usually many more.”

Don’t forget to see the doctor.

Google’s Chief Health Strategist, Roni Zeiger, MD, writes on Google’s Inside Search Blog:

Every day, people search on Google for health information. Many of these searches relate to symptoms they or their loved ones may be experiencing. You might be trying to understand why you’ve had a headache every morning for a week or why your child has a tummy ache all of a sudden. Our data shows that a search for symptoms is often followed by a search for a related condition.

For example, if you search for [abdominal pain on my right side], you’ll be able to quickly see some potentially related conditions and learn more about them by clicking on the links in the list.

Here’s what it looks like:

The aggregated results come from various web sources. Zieger stresses that the list isn’t authored by doctors, and the advice is not from medical experts.

Well, that is an important thing to keep in mind.

I have to go back to the “leve 4 brain cancer” example I’ve referenced in numerous articles. Back before the Panda update was launched a year ago, Google had an eHow article from a non-expert on cancer as the top result for the query “level 4 brain cancer”. We used this as an example of where search quality (and the saturation of content from content farms) could be a real problem. Health is one area where the stakes can be much higher for search relevancy. These days, Google has a page from the the Brian Tumor Center at Harvard at the top, though the eHow article still sits at the number 2 position.

I’m not seeing the new-style results for this query, but then, I’m not seeing them for the above example either. I assume it’s still in the process of rolling out.

It’s not immediately clear how Google is generating the lists it is serving for these queries. I would hope it’s not excluding advice from medical professionals when the info is available.

Of course, the web is not a substitute for actually seeing the doctor, but people do turn to it often for quick medical info, and it’s important to society that people aren’t being fed poor information. At least they’re not just blindly throwing up advice from Google+.

Now, Google is sending a friendly reminder out to users. Here’s the email:

This is an important Google Health service announcement. You are receiving this email because you have an active Google Health account.

The Google Health Team

Were you a Google Health user? What is your plan going forward?

HealthVault lets users store and transfer info between various health-related applications, devices, and services.

Google announced last month that it would discontinuing Google Health (as well as PowerMeter) as of January 1. “Both were based on the idea that with more and better information, people can make smarter choices, whether in regard to managing personal health and wellness, or saving money and conserving energy at home. While they didn’t scale as we had hoped, we believe they did highlight the importance of access to information in areas where it’s traditionally been difficult,” Google said at the time.

As Microsoft and Google compete in many areas of tech, Microsoft is clearly using the discontinuation of a Google service to show it has a leg up in this area.

“Google has been an important ally in providing customers with access to their data and tools to better manage care online,” said Nate McLemore, general manager, Microsoft Health Solutions Group. “Microsoft continues to advance the HealthVault platform to increase its value to consumers — by adding important features, such as support for mobile devices, and by collaborating with hundreds of health organizations, including the American Cancer Society,American Heart Association and CVS Pharmacy — to deliver robust health and wellness applications that connect to HealthVault.”

There are about 300 apps connected to the HealthVault platform to help users manage various conditions, such as diabetes, asthma, pregnancy, etc. According to MIcrosoft, it’s also connected with over 70 devices, including blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitors, weight scales, pedometers, and peak flow meters.

After January 1, Google Health users will no longer be able to view, enter or edit any of their data stored in Google Health, though they will be able to download the data stored in various formats through January 1, 2013.

Within the redesign is a new dashboard and what Google says are better ways to focus on wellness goals. "So our new re-design better organizes your medical information, while creating a more welcoming place to set goals for yourself and check in daily on your progress," explains Senior Product Manager Aaron Brown. "For example, you might want to set a goal around walking more each day or to lower your cholesterol over time. With our new design, you can easily monitor your path to success with a visual graph that shows your progress towards your personalized goal. You can even create custom trackers for other things that you want to monitor like daily sleep, exercise, pregnancy or even how many cups of coffee you drink a day."

Google has also integrated with new partners like Fitbit and CardioTrainer so users can collect data for tracking progress. "In the two weeks since CardioTrainer’s integration went live, CardioTrainer developer WorkSmart Labs reports that users have already uploaded more than 150,000 workouts to Google Health, where they can more easily view, track and set goals around their workouts and monitor them along with other health and wellness information," says Brown. 

The new design also enables users to take notes and keep journals on the progress of their health conditions or medications. 

In addition to all of this there are no more personalized content links, so users should be able to find more helpful information related to specific conditions, medications or lab results that relate to them. 

Meanwhile, Google is doing more to expand its reach into healthcare facilities. Google has formed partnerships most recently, with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Sharp HealthCare.

That doesn’t include the white spaces work Google is doing. Yesterday, the company announced a partnership with the Hocking Valley Community Hospital in Logan, Ohio on the white spaces broadband deployment.

User Experience Researcher Hendrik Mueller has more about the new Google Health design here.

Google’s contribution includes a Google Fusion Tables project and customized map showing information from HHS. For example, you can see a map of "heart friendly" and "people friendly" hospitals.

"It’s important to note that the science behind measuring the quality of hospitals and health care in general is still evolving, so we can’t make definitive conclusions from this data," says Google’s Chief Health Strategist, Roni Zeiger, MD.  "However, this kind of transparency will lead to discussion, questions, and analysis which we hope will improve choices and outcomes."

Microsoft launched a Bing Maps app called Bing Health maps. This also uses data from HHS. It provides stats for the U.S. states by county.

"Bing Health Maps is very straightforward to use – (1) Select a state and, (2) Select a Community Health Indicator," explains Bing’s Chris Pendleton. "The map will re-center on the respective state and color-code the counties within that state based on unit-based reporting. You can select health indicators such as Birth Indicators (low birth weight, premature births, births to women under 18, etc.); Death Measures (homicide, lung cancer, stroke, etc.) or Health Risk Factors (obesity, smokers, high blood pressure, etc.). If the opacity doesn’t suit your fancy there’s a slider to increase or decrease it."

"Once the map is loaded with the respective counties shaded you can click on any county to get all of the factors listed under the Community Health Indicator list all in one popup for that county," continues Pendleton. "This app is jam-packed with information! Let’s say you’re looking to move California because you think everyone there is a health nut. Turn on the Bing Health Maps to see which counties are most healthy. Then, when you’re deciding to be a SoCal or NorCal person (the war wages on) you can fire up the Oodle Map App to check out rentals in the respective area. Or, check out the Twitter Map App and filter based on keywords like “running,” “hiking,” or “surfing” and you’ll finally find out that SoCal is just better since people aren’t Tweeting – they’re actually out running, hiking and surfing."

More about the HHS Community Health Data Initiative can be found here.

"Since the strain of influenza that is active (H1N1) is novel, no one knows exactly what will happen next. However, the CDC is warning that one possibility is a second spike of flu activity, which is what occurred in 1957 when another novel strain of influenza spread in the United States," says Google Software Engineer Matt Mohebbi. "We’ve been chatting with public health officials about new ways we can help people understand the spread of flu during this unusual time and today we’re excited to bring city level flu estimates to 121 cities in the United States."

"By tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, we’re able to estimate the level of flu in near real-time," says Mohebbi. "Google Flu Trends is updated daily and may provide early detection of flu activity, since traditional flu surveillance systems often take days or weeks to collect and release data."

The city-level estimates provided by Google Flu Trends are considered "experimental" because they have not been validated with official data, but Google says that the estimates are made in a similar manner to its national estimates, which have been validated.

A complete list of the cities Google tracks can be found here.

Related Articles:

> Bing Gets New Health Search Features

> More Americans Going Online For Health Information

> Can Google Save Us From Pestilence?

This experiment will trigger a poll question on a small percentage of random health-related searches. In cases where these occur, users will see see boxes like these in their search results:

"Understanding how people search when they’re feeling sick is an important problem to solve, as it can help improve projects like Google Flu Trends, which uses aggregated search data to detect influenza epidemics," Google explains in an official blog post. "Statistics gathered in this experiment may also help Google deliver more relevant search results in the future."

They give an example of a search for "arthritis pain". This could be someone researching arthritis in general, or someone looking for treatments, or something else entirely. Google wants to get better at figuring this out (intent-based search anyone?).

Google is quick to address any potential privacy concerns that users may have regarding this news:

Data collected in this survey will be aggregated across thousands of users. Survey responses will be stored together with the original search query, but will not be associated with email addresses or other personally identifiable information. Survey data will not be used for advertising — it will only be used to help Google improve health-related search results and to help refine public health trends based on aggregated search queries, much like Google Flu Trends.

Google is choosing the search terms it uses for the polls by surveying users about health-related terms. The company says it is avoiding asking about potential embarrassing or life-threatening topics. This includes items related to mental health, illegal behavior, and sexual behavior.

Users who see the poll are not required to respond to get their search results. More information about it can be viewed in this FAQ.

OK, on to the matter of Google Health that was introduced by Google in 2007, opened in 2008 and is receiving some new attention. You can see CNET’s coverage which has been reworked due to some confusion regarding policies. Considering Google’s close ties to the current administration one has to guess that there is no coincidence that as the president ratchets up his talk on health care reform that Google begins to promote this product. Nice touch.

The idea behind Google Health is that you can have your medical records online with Google that you can update and share with people that you assign access to your data. The most obvious application is in an emergency situation that doctors have up to date information that will help them treat a patient having more information and thus avoiding any issues that may arise with pre-existing conditions and medications.

Sameer Samat, director of product management at Google, explained his personal impetus behind the new feature in a company blog post on Wednesday:

Just a few years ago, my father suffered a minor heart attack and was sent to the ER. I arrived on the scene in a panic, and was asked what medications he was taking. To my surprise, I had no clue. If my father had a Google Health account, and had shared his profile with me, I would have been up-to-date on his current medications.

The obvious question is about security. In a nutshell, you allow a person to have access to this data via an assigned e-mail address. That information cannot be forwarded to another party. These people can only see the information and not edit it as well. A record will be kept as to who saw the data also.

The big questions and concerns will be around security as they should be. I suspect that Google has taken every measure to lock this down. Something to consider though is that Google and this system is NOT regulated under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA. Also, there will be Google employees that will have access to this data.

So when it comes to health information when do you hit the ‘too much information’ threshold? When do you put your information in another area that could possibly be compromised? What would happen in an emergency if this information could not be found as was the case with Mr. Samat? This begs a lot questions and it will certainly be an individual choice to get involved. What’s your take?

Comments