Our company had early access to this product and I was impressed by it. Our company had built our own FHIR datastore and I can attest to the fact that it's a more complex endeavor than it seems externally.<p>The killer feature of the product is its simple connectivity to other Google Cloud products for ML/Analytics purposes. Being able to receive a large quantity of radiology images (DICOM) or clinical data (using tools like Epic Kit/Caboodle) and immediately _do something with it_ is pretty impressive and hopefully lowers the burden for innovators in the space.<p>Of course, there are other options if you are looking for them, namely:<p>1) Azure API for FHIR: <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-api-for-fhir/" rel="nofollow">https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-api-for-fhi...</a> -> Focused a bit more on application-workflows currently than ML/Analytics. Also has an open-source version: <a href="https://github.com/Microsoft/fhir-server" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Microsoft/fhir-server</a><p>2) HAPI FHIR: <a href="http://hapifhir.io/doc_intro.html" rel="nofollow">http://hapifhir.io/doc_intro.html</a> Open-source library from the makers of the most popular HL7v2 parser library. We run a bit of this today and it works smoothly. There's unofficial commercial support (same creators, different effort) from <a href="https://smilecdr.com/" rel="nofollow">https://smilecdr.com/</a>.<p>3) Vonk: Made by a company that has focused alot on FHIR based tooling. <a href="https://fire.ly/vonk/" rel="nofollow">https://fire.ly/vonk/</a>
HL7 is a joke as are most acronyms in the healthcare tech space.<p>It's like reading through a framework devised by lawyers and policy makers. I cant wrap my head around healthcare tech to save my life and ive been working the field for 15 years. It's a jumbled mess.<p>HL7 is what happens when a regulator designs a tech framework.
I'm amazed that Google is targeting the EMR space (HL7v2, VPNs, FHIR). This area is one that is ripe for innovation. The incumbents charge high fees, users dislike the products, the margins for operation are very high. Some products are very legacy.<p>These tools are the things that would make building EMRs much more approachable. Not having to deal with HL7, automatically getting VPNs set up for you, and having someone else be partially liable for HIPAA compliance is a godsend.
With Google’s history of cancelling huge and expensive initiatives, why would anyone build on something like this.<p>It will be different this time, they said.
Who would trust Google to build expensive products on their platform? I wouldn't be surprised if the prices change dramatically or they decide to discontinue the service. Worst decision you can make is to invest in cloud proprietary APIs/services(i.e Google Datastore/Firestore). You can put Google next to Facebook(with Parse or whatever "cloud" service they've been offering)
Say I'm a solo web developer and I've built informational websites for some doctors' offices and small hospitals. They want to have simple patient referral and appointment request forms on their websites (mostly they still do that stuff by phone and fax), but in order to comply with HIPAA, I'd have to adopt a whole bunch of infrastructure above and beyond the couple of semi-managed VPSs I have now, not to mention paperwork and self-audits and so forth. (Or at least that's my understanding.)<p>Is this Healthcare API just targeted at people building full-blown EMRs or is there something here that would help me handle small amounts of PHI like in the above scenarios?<p>Going by the examples on the pricing page, this looks like it would be massively cheaper than e.g. TrueVault [0] (who don't seem to publish their prices any more but IIRC start out in the thousands per month), if indeed this could be an alternative to TrueVault.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.truevault.com/pricing" rel="nofollow">https://www.truevault.com/pricing</a>
This was launched last year:<p><a href="https://www.blog.google/products/google-cloud/google-cloud-healthcare-new-apis-customers-partners-and-security-updates/" rel="nofollow">https://www.blog.google/products/google-cloud/google-cloud-h...</a>
Great, another spot where my information will be without any (explicit ) input or consent by myself.<p>More or less any business system these days is hosted through a service provider, with unknown policies, protections and security.
I work in healthcare, and even after reading the entirety of Google's blog post about this, I still feel uneasy.<p>I'm not sure what the root of my misgivings are. Maybe I just don't trust Google anymore.<p>One thing I can put my finger on is the fear that Google will one day pull the plug on this project like so many others. And now we're not talking about social media posts being in jeopardy, but people's lives.
Didn't Google try and fail with this once already? Remember "Google Health"?[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Health" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Health</a>