by Tony Chen

This past week, the NYT reported on that both Google and Microsoft are each unveiling a major healthcare product in the next 12 months. While they remain hush-hush on specifics, one thing is for sure - both see the avalanche of consumer-driven healthcare coming. For better or worse, consumers will be in control of their health.

From the NYT article:

The Google and Microsoft initiatives would give much more control to individuals, a trend many health experts see as inevitable. “Patients will ultimately be the stewards of their own information,” said John D. Halamka, a doctor and the chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School.

Already the Web is allowing people to take a more activist approach to health. According to the Harris survey, 58 percent of people who look online for health information discussed what they found with their doctors in the last year.

It is common these days, Dr. Halamka said, for a patient to come in carrying a pile of Web page printouts. “The doctor is becoming a knowledge navigator,” he said. “In the future, health care will be a much more collaborative process between patients and doctors.”

The blogosphere has been ablaze since the article came out. Some screenshots of Google's patient interface/record have surfaced on the web here. The WSJ Health blog and other blogs make note of recent healthcare acquisitions by Microsoft (bought MedStory, a healthcare web search engine) and Google (23andme, a genetic profiling company).

As noted in this ZDNET blog, the future direction seems imminent:

In the future of the “data Web,” healthcare information and alerts relevant to an individual will show up in the same way Amazon recommendations surface. With the data online, you could input symptoms, upload images and the “system” could check against your history, medications, allergies, etc., prior to an online video consult with a physician thousands of miles away.

Of course, all the same old data issues have to be worked out - privacy, malpractice, storage, interoperability, and security. Plus, there's a little problem with funding and business model (hopefully we will never see a Google banner ad within our medical record!) Nonetheless, Microsoft already has their products in lots of hospitals, and Google obviously dominates search (12% of people consult Google before visiting their doctor!). And both have mounds of cash.

Make no mistake about it- this is not a continuation of the Google vs. Microsoft War that's been going on for years. This is Google or [insert brave company name here] against the most powerful force of them all: the healthcare industry status quo.