Google, IBM Intro Software Partnership For Google Health

Google, IBM and the Continua Health Alliance on Thursday unveiled new software that allows personal medical devices to stream data results in and out of Google Health accounts or other personal health records.

The move is a major initiative by Google in the emerging personal health record (PHR) space, where the search giant's chief competition is Microsoft and its Microsoft HealthVault.

Google Health is a cloud-based program free to users, and was launched in May 2008 to enable consumers to store and manage their personal health information and medical records online, as well as move them around securely. Both Google's and Microsoft's PHR offerings allow users to share data with physicians or any other medical entity at their discretion.

IBM's component, as the vendors explained in statements released Thursday, allows IBM a piece of the PHR action but for the purposes of Google Health is designed to make that flow of personal information easier. IBM has integrated Google Health with its Information Management, Business Intelligence and WebSphere Premises server platforms to make sure patient records are up to date and accurate round-the-clock.

"By harnessing the rapidly growing use of remote patient monitoring across every part of the health care services industry, our new IBM solution greatly increases the real-time value of PHRs for consumers everywhere," said Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM's Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry, in a statement. "Open standards-based systems and technologies -- freely available to anyone interested in using them -- are key to fueling the development of systems that can share and exchange vital health care information on a timely basis, whenever and wherever it's needed."

According to IBM, it developed the software using guidelines from the Continua Health Alliance, a consortium created in 2006 to select standards, write interoperability guidelines and tackle security issues for personal health care products. Continua's board of directors currently includes executives from Partners Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, Cisco, Medtronic, Philips, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp and PricewaterhouseCoopers, among other leaders in health care, technology and finance.

David Whitlinger, director of healthcare device standards and interoperability at Intel's Digital Health Group, is the Alliance's president and board chairman.

"With close to a quarter of the world's population overweight, more than 600 million people with some form of chronic disease, and millions more reaching retirement age, the time for greater personal health management is now," said Whitlinger in a statement. "Together, we can create a new marketplace, improve health and quality of life, and advance personal telehealth worldwide."

Health-care IT and digital health records are a major priority of the Obama administration, and the president expects those initiatives to spur growth in everything from jobs to health care IT opportunities for technology integrators.