Reading the New York Times I came across an article which made me think "at last" because it talked about centralizing your own health information. The idea is that a company which currently has a vast amount of health information could be paired up with your personal information in order to give you a personalized heath plan for individuals. What I imagine is that the site would for instance, know you have diabetes and give you not only ways to help manage it and information on your progress but also could tell you about new research or drugs which you could ask your doctor about.
The article estimated that about 80% of health decision are made by individuals. In order for individuals to be making the right decisions they need to have relevant information at their fingertips. Right now the best alternative is the as the article puts "standard second opinion of diagnosis and treatment has become a patients Google search." Not to say this isn't a powerful way to go about getting a second opinion but shouldn't there be more health tailored site which can work on an individual basis? This company based in San Francisco (my home away from home) is called Keas has put together a team which knows how to use a computer and a database. I expect only good things to come from this.
NY Times Article
October 6th 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
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