Google Health: helping you better coordinate your care

We continue to learn a tremendous amount since launching Google Health in the spring of 2008. We're listening to feedback from users every day about their needs, and one issue we hear regularly is that people want help coordinating their care and the care of loved ones. They want the ability to share their medical records and personal health information with trusted family members, friends, and doctors in their care network. I can relate to this.

Just a few years ago, my father suffered a minor heart attack and was sent to the ER. I arrived on the scene in a panic, and was asked what medications he was taking. To my surprise, I had no clue. If my father had a Google Health account, and had shared his profile with me, I would have been up-to-date on his current medications.

I'm happy to announce today Google Health has addressed this issue with the release of a new "Share this profile" feature enabling Google Health users to invite others they trust (whether it's a family member, a trusted care network provider, friends, and/or a doctor) to view their medical records and personal health information.

Log into Google Health, click on "Share this Profile," and type in the email address of the person with whom you'd like to share your profile. Google Health will send an email to them with a link to view your profile. The link will only work in connection with the email address of that person — your profile can't be accessed if the link is forwarded on. You can stop sharing at any time, and you can always see who has access to your information. Those who are viewing your profile can only see the profile you share — not any other one in your account. We've also built in some extra protections to make sure your health information stays safe, private, and under your control:

• The sharing link in the email expires after 30 days, but the sharing access itself does not expire — it will stay in place until the user decides to stop sharing
• Viewers can only see — not edit — your Google Health profile
• You can review a user activity report to see who has viewed your profile

For doctors and family members who are not yet online, we've also made it easier to share a hard copy of your information via our new printing feature. The wallet format prints a wallet-sized card that includes a user's medications, and allergies; the PDF format prints a letter-sized copy of a user's profile, including medications, allergies, conditions, and treatments.

Finally, we've launched a new graphing feature that helps patients visualize their medical test information. This is great for, say, someone who has high cholesterol. They can use Google Health to enter their lab results on a monthly basis and see the trend over time.

There is still a lot more work to do on Google Health, and we're excited to keep hearing from you so we can continue to make improvements. For now, we hope this new sharing feature makes coordinating your care, or the care of loved ones, a little easier.

Update on 3/6: Clarified the first bullet point.

Posted by Sameer Samat, Director, Product Management

Chatting away on iGoogle...

I'm a creature of habit. My morning routine consists of going to my desk with coffee mug in hand and checking my email, reading the news and updating my to-do list. One place I can do all of that without having to go to multiple websites is iGoogle. Having the ability to work on email right on my iGoogle page has been awesome, but I simply couldn't get the same Gmail experience without the chat feature. So we got together with the iGoogle team several months back to talk about how to integrate a chat feature on iGoogle, and since then, we've been running experiments with a small number of iGoogle users and have also been using it internally. We're pleased to announce that starting today we are extending the feature to a larger set of iGoogle users.

Similar to the chat feature on Gmail, people will be able to send instant messages to their colleagues, friends and family straight from their iGoogle page. We've made this easy. If you're already a Gmail chat user, all your current chat settings will apply to iGoogle, so things will work the way you like in both places. But even more exciting is that you'll even be able to chat with friends who don't yet have a Gmail address — any email address will do. All you have to do is invite them as a chat buddy, and if they accept your invitation and sign up for iGoogle with their personal email account, their name becomes just a click away right on your page. Don't want to be bothered while you're checking out the latest news or reading your emails? You have a couple of options to hid the chat feature. You can either click the chat “options” link and selecting “hide chat,” or sign off completely by selecting "sign out of chat."

It's worth noting that this feature may have some kinks, so we ask for your patience as we work through them. Here at Google, it's common practice for us to involve our users as early possible so we can make sure we get it right. We'll also be rolling this feature out slowly, so if you don't see it on your iGoogle page and you simply can't wait to check it out, feel free to opt in by going to www.google.com/ig/v2invite.

Currently, iGoogle chat is rolling out in English for our U.S. users. But don't worry, the feature is coming soon for other iGoogle supported languages and countries. You can check out our Help Center for more information on how it works, and as always, we are interested in hearing any feedback you have.


Posted by Rhett Robinson, Google Talk Engineer

YouTube Symphony Orchestra winners are announced

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

Today we are proud to announce the winners of the world's first online collaborative orchestra. The global YouTube community and a judging panel containing members of the world's most renowned orchestras have selected over 90 talented musicians to be part of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Together, these professional and amateur musicians play 26 different instruments and come from 30+ countries and territories on six continents.

To grasp the level of talent we’re talking about, just take a look at the stellar string section:


The selected musicians will travel from around the world to New York City to participate in a collaborative summit for classical music on April 12-15, 2009, concluding with a concert at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony Music Director, New World Symphony Founder and Artistic Director, and London Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest Conductor.

All the winning audition videos are on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Channel; please share your congratulations with these musicians in the comments section, and don’t forget to stay tuned as we follow them on the road to Carnegie Hall. (If you’d like to cheer them on in person, tickets are on sale now at www.carnegiehall.org.)

Cue the congratulatory strings!

Posted by Michele Flannery, YouTube Music