This client was written by Dave Chase, CEO of Avado.com, a technology company that health was a finalist Techcrunch Disrupt. Previously he was a management consultant for the practice of health care for Accenture and was the founder of Microsoft Health. You can follow him on Twitter @ chasedave.
As mentioned on TechCrunch, Google closed its medical records and health data of the platform. Since then, there was a lot of bits spilled offering explanations, but they all missed the most critical point. Money. Or in the language of health-reimbursement. I explain more below on why Google Health was doomed to fail in light of the reimbursement model inheritance.
First, we will summarize some of the explanations offered so far. These are all valid, but you miss the larger point.
Adam Bosworth, who originally ran Google Health gave only one reason: It is not social. This is true if one wants to create a program for weight management or just interested in fitness-minded people. Clearly this is important, given the obesity epidemic, but there are large areas of health where being "social" is not appropriate or applicable in a doctor-patient relationship. In other words, social welfare is necessary but not sufficient to transform health care.
In the comments section of TechCrunch reported the original closing, I gave my take immediate ...
It is difficult, even for large companies, to focus on a lot of different things. I'm sure they could have understood how to be successful if it was of strategic importance such as research or Chrome or Android or social ... but they have other fish to fry.
The health area is a very difficult question. In many ways, it's against-intuitive for those who were not in the arena of both the health care provider and the consumer perspective.
As there is a huge consumer empowerment movement, to obtain the adoption and continued off something in health care, we need to carry with clinicians Further more about health:Yeast infection no more
If you are interested in more, I wrote about it here.
One of the best analyzes was made by John Moore of Chilmark Research.
Few consumers are interested in a digital file for their records. What they are interested in what data can do for them. Can it help them better manage their health and / or health of a loved one? Will it help them make an appointment? Will it save money on their bill health insurance for their trip to the doctor the next? Can it help to automatically obtain a repeat prescription? These are the basics that the vast majority of consumers want addressed first and Google Health was unable to fulfill one of these.
As much as we'd like to think that it is not the case, the main driver of most (not all) the behavior of health care is the reimbursement scheme. As I described in an earlier article on the "Do it Yourself Health Reform" movement, I spent much of my time as a consultant in accounting services for patients of providers heatlhcare. The device reimbursement inheritance can be described as a Gordian knot designed by Rube Goldberg.
