Online personal health records are apparently no longer an interest for Google, whose Google Health service failed to meet the initial expectations. According to Google executives, the company hoped to attract millions of regular users by this service, which eventually failed catastrophically.
Senior Product manager of the project known as Google Health, Aaron Brown, mentioned in one of his blog posts that the company was hoping that using the same recipe as in other consumer-centered project approaches would make Health a real success. Yet, most of the plans were ruined after the number of regular visitors that is far below the initial expectations.
The main idea of Google Health is to help users achieve individual motivation and make common efforts by sharing personalized health records. Every owner of a Google Health account is required to update the data regularly.
A possible explanation for the failure of this idea comes from IDC Health Insights analyst Lynne A. Dunbrack, who explains that most users are not experienced with the concept of personal health records and fail to use them accordingly. In addition to this, the same institute has recently conducted a survey that pointed out that only 7 percent of the consumers attempted to use online personal health records and most of them gave up the idea.
Google is not the first company to abandon such an initiative. Another major project that was cancelled for similar reasons is the one created by Revolution Health, which also failed to lure people to open an account and update it regularly. Current suppliers include Microsoft, WebMD and RelayHealth, but analysts have not yet determined the success of such programs.
