On Thursday, Google and IBM announced a new partnership that would allow Google Health to connect to and stream data from medical devices. This is accomplished by fitting Wi-Fi radios to devices like
heart rate monitors, scales and blood sugar measurement readers, which can then transmit medical information in real-time to Google Health. IBM is providing the software, called Websphere, for
aggregating and translating the medical data to Google's health site.
The new service would allow relatives, for example, to remotely track the glucose readings of a diabetic living alone,
or a physical trainer to monitor the weight and heart rate information of one of their clients. "If there's something abnormal, you can catch it before you have an episodic intervention, like going to
the emergency room," says Dan Pelino, manager of IBM's health care division. "This is like OnStar for a patient, keeping constant information about you and sending alerts even before you have a
problem."
For IBM, the partnership is just one step in a broader push to get the health care industry to digitize patients' records. This idea may finally be coming to fruition, as
President Barack Obama has set aside $20 billion of his $900 billion stimulus package to create a new digitized health record system.
Read the whole story at Forbes.com »