Software Business in the Middle East

Google has recently opened the beta version of its healthcare service Google Health. When I saw they had information about drugs, and even interactive checks for drug-drug interactions, I was not very happy. It’s not excellent news to have such competitor as Google. Then I checked some of the drugs that I normally show myself to our potential customers when we have demo meetings – and I was really shocked.

The example is a prescription of Aspirin and Warfarin at the same time. This combination might be fatal for a patient, especially with intravenous or oral administration. The warning shown by Google can be viewed on this picture.

Briefly, Google says that both drugs belong to the same family of medications. Google Health has two types of warnings: the one that requires immediate actions and the one that patient would need to discuss with the doctor soon. The example above has the last warning – to discuss with the doctor soon.

The problem is that patient might not be able to discuss it with her or his doctor because of the patient’s death. The risk is the highest if medications are taken intravenously, depending on the dose, of course.

I checked some other dangerous combinations, and I was not able to find many of them at all…

The situation is pretty strange – Google Health has a reference to First DataBank that is one of the leading drug reference company in US, and probably even in the entire world.

We could say these kind of mistakes are found because of beta version. But one thing is when my beta version of Firefox crashes, and another is when I get irrelevant warnings for the dangerous drug combinations. I know it is really difficult to keep track on the latest researches when some drugs show very dangerous side effects after being considered as safe for years. But at least well known drug-drug interactions and other warnings must be presented.

I was not able to find a feedback button – how do they want to hear what others think about their service?

Despite the fact of such very dangerous mistake, Google Health is a good attempt to build a common platform for Electronic Health Records (EHR). HealthVault from Microsoft tries doing very similar thing. Once implemented, EHR will allow doctors in any clinic or hospital checking the full medical history of a patient, no matter where the patient got treatment. Many countires tried implemented EHR, but I haven’t heard about any successfully implemented project for entire country. It seems to be very non-trivial task.

______________________
RSS Subscription for this blog