Hello Mary Lu

A few friends online pointed me toward a news release about Google’s Health Advisory Council in order to help the company begin to organize and understand how best to relate healthcare information to people who utilize Google for their healthcare information. Now I have to admit it is an admiral and responsible thing for them to do.

The mission of the council is to help Google better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development. Okay so let’s see who’s on the Council, shall we?

Google Health Advisory Council
(Institutions or affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.)

Chairman
Dean Ornish, M.D., Founder and President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Douglas Bell, M.D., Ph.D., Research Scientist, RAND Health, RAND Corporation

Delos M. Cosgrove, M.D., Chief Executive Officer, The Cleveland Clinic

Molly Coye, M.D., M.P.H., Chief Executive Officer, HealthTech

Dan Crippen, Former Congressional Budget Office Director & Reagan White House Assistant

Linda M. Dillman, Executive Vice President, Risk Management, Benefits and Sustainability, Wal-Mart

John Halamka M.D., M.S., Chief Information Officer, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center & Harvard Medical School and Chairman, Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)

Bernadine Healy M.D., Former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Health Editor & Columnist, U.S. News & World Report

Bernie Hengesbaugh, Chief Operating Officer, The American Medical Association (AMA)

Douglas E. Henley, M.D., F.A.A.F.P., Executive Vice President, American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)

David Kessler, M.D.,Former FDA Commissioner, Vice Chancellor-Medical Affairs & Dean, School of Medicine, UCSF

John Lumpkin M.D, Senior Vice President, Director of Health Care Group, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

John Rother, Group Executive Officer of Policy & Strategy, AARP

Anna-Lisa Silvestre, Vice President, Online Services, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.

Greg Simon, J.D., President, FasterCures

Mark D. Smith, M.D., MBA, President & Chief Executive Officer, The California HealthCare Foundation

Paul Tang, M.D., Internist & Vice President, Chief Medical Information Officer, Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) & Chairman, Board of Directors, American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)

Sharon Terry, M.A., President & Chief Executive Officer, Genetic Alliance

John Tooker, M.D., MBA, F.A.C.P., Executive Vice President & Chief Executive Officer, American College of Physicians (ACP)

Doug Ulman, President, Lance Armstrong Foundation

Robert M. Wachter, M.D., Professor of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco (UCSF); Associate Chairman, UCSF Department of Medicine; Chief of the Medical Service, UCSF Medical Center

Matthew Zachary, Cancer Patient Advocate, Founder & Executive Director, The I’m Too Young for This! Cancer Foundation for Young Adults

On closer examination there are absolutely no practitioners, i.e. Nurses, Pharmacists, (like Dr. Doug,) Medical Laboratory, Medical Librarians, Dietitians, Physical Therapist, or even Online Community Experts who have dealt with healthcare groups, like me. The majority of the Council is made up of Doctors, most of which I’d be willing to guess couldn’t use a computer to do a serious research online if their life depended on it. Normally a majority of this group would have an assistant do it for them. The remainder of the group are high profile foundations and lobbying groups.

For a good 15 minutes I was left scratching my head going "What the heck???" Then a little research hit me in the face. Google’s doing this to push or at least test the waters for their new Electronic Medical Records project! Lovely. Is it possible this little council is all smoke and mirrors to push a new product on the public and healthcare in general? It’s possible.

The Reality Check is Google has completely stepped into the Twilight Zone. Someone needs to smack whomever is in charge of this program and came up with this esteemed group with a copy of The Cluetrain Manifesto. While Google says they are looking to "help users make more empowered and informed healthcare decisions, and have been steadily developing our ability to make our search results more medically relevant and more helpful to users", they have done nothing to reach out and connect with the real people who normally do the patient education or the types of people who will use this technology.

In my opinion this is a major mistake. Send them some email and express your concerns.

Tip of the hat to Kevin, M.D. and Kim at Emergiblog.