Cleveland Clinic and Google Collaborate to Expand PHR
The Cleveland Clinic’s electronic personal health record (PHR) system, eCleveland Clinic MyChart, will be expanded through a collaboration between the Clinic and Google. The Clinic’s system will be updated to include functions to support secure exchange of patient’s medical records information to a secure Google profile. Additional information about the partnership is included in the news release on the Cleveland Clinic’s website.
The intent of the new services from Google to be integrated is to encourage patients to become more involved in their own healthcare. An additional benefit of the integrated tools from Google include the means to share information with multiple healthcare providers, including clinicians and pharmacies.
Over 100,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic use the PHR system. The new features will be rolled out for a pilot test to a group of 1,500 to 10,000 of the patients who already use eCleveland Clinic MyChart. Users will be invited to participate. Plans are to broaden the availability of the Google components to a larger patient cohort after preliminary assessment.
The Cleveland Clinic is spearheading a number of efforts to encourage patient-centered care. This new capability will allow patients to control how their personal health information is shared while also ensuring that such information is transmitted in a secure manner.
The pilot effort will provide Google with the opportunity to assess the new features and services which they intend to incorporate into a personal health records system for patient use. The collaborative intends to provide patients with anytime, national access to their health records at no cost.
A future goal of the system is to provide patients with the ability to “take” their health records with them, even if they leave the Cleveland Clinic Health System.
February 27, 2008 Related topics: Partnerships & Consortia