UPMC Plans Patient Access to Records Through Google; Similar System Already in Use at Small Missouri Hospital

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center will launch an integrated medical record through Google Health in the spring, according to a release from UPMC.

The project, a collaboration with Google Health, Carnegie Mellon University and dbMotion, will aggregate information from a wide range of technologies and present it to patients and physicians in an understandable and genuinely usable way.

The 20-hospital system, including 1,042-bed UPMC Presbyterian, will provide secure and bi-directional services so that providers and patients can share data back and forth.

Meanwhile, Citizens Memorial Healthcare, which runs a 74-bed hospital in Bolivar, Mo., is already operating its patient records system through Google Health, according to a report by Ozarks First.

Citizens Memorial is the third hospital system in the country and the first rural one to partner with Google Health on such a project.

The Missouri health system said hospitals are slow to use Google because setting it up is costly and time-consuming.

Read UPMC's release on Google Health.

Read Ozarks First's report on Citizens Memorial Healthcare.