BLOGSCAN - Google Health and Drug and Device Advertising

On the Bioethics Forum, see these comments by Karama Neal. Google Health has been getting a lot of buzz for making some sort of personal electronic health record available to the masses. Too bad that, as Neal noted, "it makes sales pitches from pharmaceutical companies part and parcel of medical decision-making." Apparently the software was designed to provide advertising pitching products relevant to a particular patient's condition to a physician looking at that patient's Google Health record. So in signing up for Google Health, patients are also signing up to help drug, biotechnology and device companies hawk their wares to physicians.