Google, like Microsoft, is working on a database system to store medical records. If you send them your records, or give your doctor permission to send them, they'll hold the info for you and allow you access anywhere you can get an Internet connection. To start with, they're partnering with Cleveland Clinic.

News article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/articl...1&intsrc=kc_top

It's worth noting that several other electronic health records efforts are out there as well, but with Google and Microsoft getting in on the action, there's a lot more discussion now.

http://www.google.com/Top/Health/Medicine/...Health_Records/

My thoughts:

1) Can Google be trusted to provide reasonable protection of your information? In other words, will you have to worry about the following situations: A Google employee browsing through records for their own enjoyment, or to stalk a former acquaintance; lost backup tapes turning up for sale to identity thieves; hacked database servers; social engineering calls leading to improperly changed passwords; etc.

2) Can Google protect your information from external pressures? For example: a request for information from a potential employer; a demand for information from same, in the form of a lawsuit; a court order to turn over information; a national security letter or similar device from the government; a spouse requesting information for during a divorce trial; etc.

3) Assuming no worries about the information being released in such a way to harm you, is it of benefit to have the information available to you from any computer terminal? (I'd say that's a big fat yes, personally.)

4) Is it possible for this data, when centrally stored and analyzed, to benefit humanity in general? In other words, assuming it's all anonymized so no individual is exposed, can research be done to discover some previously unknown fact about human medicine? Would Google "lease" the data (again, anonymized) to researches? Who would own any subsequent findings? How would any profit be shared between the researches, Google, and the people whose data was used? What about when data is desired for a specific geographic location, for example a small town that's situated near a chemical plant?

 

think this is cuba? you expect anything 4free out there?

-use the browzer setting "clear private data" often
-use an application like ccleaner at startup
-the windows disk cleaner is slow but it remove some operating system files
-all the small private browzers use the micorsoft cache api

especially at work
especially after doing mybank.com

just for any web site you frequent how much is not live? gotten from a dns server cache some place downtown.

 

Example of potential benefit of somebody looking for trends in a medical database:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/...tery/index.html

Example of potential risk (?) of a centralized medical database:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/02...s.ap/index.html

 

I'll pass. The government and identity thieves have an easy enough job as it is, getting our personal data. There's no way I'm going to make it even easier....

 

The answer to all four of your questions is NO.

In 2006 I had a roommate who worked in IT security. At 3 AM one night he heard his hard drive whirring away and went to investigate. Turned out, Google was uploading his home network information. He blocked access to Google from that moment forward.

 

If he was running a website from his computer, it's only natural for Google (and Yahoo, and MSN, and Lycos, and all those other search engines) to upload his info.

Anyway, I posted an example above where cross-referencing multiple medical records lead to significant improvements for some very sick people. What is that sort of thing worth, eh?