This isn't strictly political, perhaps, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
The slow but steady march towards a unified online healthcare management system continues. Google has announced that it has forged a new partnership with CVS, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, allowing CVS customers to import their full prescription history into Google Health. CVS joins other major pharmacies including Longs Drugs and Walgreens in offering the same functionality, which combined now allow over 100 million Americans to import their medical histories into Google Health, which launched last May.
It may not sound terribly exciting at first, but the ability to quickly look up a patient’s past and current medications is actually very important in an age when it seems that nearly everyone is on at least one prescription medication. While national pharmacies can typically look up what medications you’ve filled from other branches of their store, they can’t search through the systems of other chains, so they’re forced to rely on the patient to self-report their medical history.
from http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/06/cvs-signs-on-with-google-health-to-offer-comprehensive-pharmacy-history/
What do you guys/gals think? Is this open-information future a good thing that will save lives or is it a frightening exposure of things you think should be private?
