Several comments and critiques as I watched Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, talk about Google Health:

• Please stop calling patients consumers. Patients are people with illnesses or injuries who need medical care; consumers are people who purchase goods or services and are informed about what they’re purchasing. (Most patients are not actively dictating what health care resources they’re consuming.) Note: there are certainly consumers of health information, but a person who comes to me seeking medical attention is not a consumer. He or she is a patient.
• The medical record is not the patient’s property. I believe the model we need to use for the medical record is “shared control,” that is, the patient controls who sees the information in their medical record, but the patient’s physician controls the actual information . A patient with HIV or a history of anaphylactic shock to penicillin should not be able to delete this from their medical record.
• Wow, it would be amazingly cool to have all XRays and CT scans from everyone in the country online. I would love that.
• Dr. Schmidt talks about young people, and how we already see the future of what will happen with society, what changes will occur and how quickly and says that the older people like him need to be ready to change and adapt. But I’d guess no one on their Health Advisory Board , with the exception of Matthew Zachary , is under 40 or 50; few if any likely have a Youtube account or Facebook profile. If young people are so in the know, get our opinions!

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