All Your Health Are Belong To Us

When you provide your information through Google Health, you give Google a license to use and distribute it in connection with Google Health and other Google services. However, Google may only use health information you provide as permitted by the Google Health Privacy Policy, your Sharing Authorization, and applicable law. Google is not a “covered entity” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the regulations promulgated thereunder (“HIPAA”). As a result, HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.

The new Google Health is such a bad idea in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to begin. One thing I noticed in the presentation is there is no granularity and no user-configurable permissions control or data sequestering. It’s a typical Google totalising info grab. You link your private data to Google, in some cases information from HIPAA-constrained hospitals or insurers, and in return Google snarfs it up and reserves the right to promulgate it throughout its promiscuously monetising network. They are doing it wrong.