Ramble On

I can’t tell you enough that how glad I was to read that stood up for the freedom of expression and diversity of viewpoint in your exchange with Senator Lieberman. While I would find the message of groups that have ties or even sympathies for terrorists completely objectionable, particularly when those messages are often in direct opposition to the values of a open and diverse society. It is an incredibly slippery slope when you begin to censor the voices of any group, even those opposed to the very foundation which provides the protection to their voice. At no time should you ever compromise on the position to let such voices be heard. Thank you for the principles you showed here with the Senator.

But I do want to ask. Many of the world’s eyes will be focused on Beijing this summer for the Olympics. When the time comes again to take a similar principled position, when you are perhaps asked by a ranking official in the Chinese communist party to silence a voice that they do not agree with - will you answer in the same way?

You have compromised such principles at face value when it comes to your search service. A bit a different situation, sure, I’ll grant that. The Chinese government seems content in at least banning your YouTube property outright when the conditions arise - and it appears that you aren’t compromising on that particular service in the same way to maintain access to the service.

I and a lot of others gave you a pass last time, hoping and believing that getting a foot inside the great firewall would begin to open things up in getting information to the Chinese people. But I hope when asked again, particularly when YouTube comes to represent a significant source of revenue, like the search property on which you compromised, that you will show an even greater principle, standing on the bedrock principles of expression and diversity when you don’t have the power of the first amendment to stand upon, only the courage of your expressed convictions.

So, in the next few days, you’ll have to be under a technical rock to not know that Google has partnered with the Cleveland Clinic on medical records access for patients and care providers.

I imagine that a lot of the reaction that I’ll be seeing in my aggregator will be a lot like Fred Stutzman - because I tend to surround my aggregator with folks that think like Fred. I always respect Fred’s viewpoints and I almost universally agree with Fred on his viewpoints on things.

But not this time.

Now, I really do think that Fred has some very good talking points. And normally, I’d be all up in arms about the privacy implications of this.

But not this time.

(conflict of interest alert - I own a whopping 2 shares of Google stock)

Admittedly, maybe it’s that I’m not passionately concerned about the strict privacy of my medical records themselves. Maybe it’s because I’m southern, and we’ll talk about our ailments with strangers like most of America talks about the weather. I am passionate about protecting privacy though in general, so I don’t think that’s it.

So what I think it is is that the state of the medical records today is garbage and Google getting into this can only make things better.

I know that my dentist makes pretty good use of information technology - in fact, the best I’ve seen. Their patient records system is available from the receptionist’s desk, to the hygienist, to the dentist themselves.

But it’s a vertical, closed system. Running on Windows. I think on XP, but it might have still been Windows 2000. And they were the most advanced I’ve seen.

I’ve got glimpses of the billing records system at my primary care physician. Enough to know how poor it seemed to be. And that’s billing, I think all my patient records are still on paper there. And I think they had to fax it back and forth between them and the specialist I saw early last year. And in theory, a x-ray I had was in electronic form, but that was only shared with them and the primary care physician.

The summary statement - the state of my records is likely incredibly poor. Incomplete items, various paper copies in multiple places. And I have none of them.

With a company like Google getting into this (or even, honestly Microsoft, even though they have yet to show that they have the faintest clue about building an online service for this sort of thing) - it can’t go anywhere but up. While the privacy implications of the text comments and images, and medical terms associated with them being all wrapped up in my gmail, and search history, website analytics is certainly something to watch, at least I have the faintest glimmer of hope of finally having full access to my records, using modern systems and modern architectures, built by developers that have at least shown a far greater clue about systems design and usability than almost all vertical integrators and medical software companies whose software I’ve seen.

I would have a greater hope that I would be able to access my records, to audit their use, and at least figure out what and who is doing with them (outside Google).

This revolution can’t come soon enough.