“Health 2.0″ expected to be contagious topic at Schmidt keynote

By Kristin Courtemanche, Contributing Writer

ORLANDO, Fla. — If it is unknown exactly how much data would be generated by digitizing the entire U.S. healthcare system, what is clear is that it would be an almost incomprehensibly tremendous amount.

As a daily processor of more than 20 petabytes (that’s 20,000 terabytes) of data through its massive computer clusters, Google is quite probably one of the world’s few companies able to facilitate a large-scale conversion of healthcare information to an organized, searchable digital format.

Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote address, on Thursday, February 28, will likely focus on the challenges faced and inroads made as Google catapulted itself to position of industry leader in search functionality and data management, and how these technological innovations can be applied to Google’s new venture in the healthcare IT market.

As the former CEO and Chairman of Novell and before that CTO of Sun Microsystems, Schmidt himself is no stranger to large-scale strategic planning and infrastructure development, and is a natural candidate to spearhead Google’s efforts to bring its vast information management technologies to the personalized healthcare arena.

Attendees are doubtless hoping to hear more about the long-expected Google Health Initiative slated to appear in early 2008 as announced at San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Summit in October 2007. It is reported that not only has Google prototyped an online platform encompassing electronic health records (EHRs) and other consumer health features, but one designed to improve efficiency for physicians and clinicians as well.

EHRs made accessible across multiple practices and disciplines would not only save inordinate amounts of time but ensure better patient care by linking all clinicians involved in a patient’s case.

“Given that Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful to all, there is no better place to apply this mission than to health,” said Gabriel Stricker, Google spokesperson.

Posted by Kristin Courtemanche on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
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