Google expands to online medical record service

Google is blazing new trail in health records management as it announced on Thursday a pilot program with the Cleveland Clinic, one of the United States leading health institutions, to help patients manage their own health information.

Cleveland Clinic plans to enroll between 1,500 and 10,000 patients to trial an electronic transfer of their personal health records so they can be retrieved through Google's new service, which won't be open to the general public.

"We believe patients should be able to easily access and manage their own health information," said Marissa Mayer, the Google executive overseeing the health project, in a statement supplied by the Cleveland Clinic.

The clinic said the goal of the model was to give patients the ability to interact with multiple physicians, healthcare service providers and pharmacies.

Each health profile, including information about prescriptions, allergies and medical histories, will be protected by a password that's also required to use other Google services such as e-mail and personalized search tools.

Google's expansion into health records management comes as its search engine already processes millions of requests from people trying to find about more information about an injury, illness or recommended treatment.

However Google's move comes under fire from privacy watchdogs who believe Google already knows too much about the interests and habits of its users.

Prodded by the criticism, Google last year introduced a new system that purges people's search records after 18 months.

In a show of its privacy commitment, Google also successfully rebuffed the U.S. Justice Department's demand to examine millions of its users' search requests in a court battle two years ago.