A collaboration between IBM, Google and the Continua Health Alliance, a group of technology, healthcare and fitness companies, will enable personal medical devices to automatically stream data results into a patient's Google Health account or other personal health record.
 
Officials say this will extend the value of PHRs to consumers and help ensure that such records are current and accurate at all times.

IBM software will connect personal medical devices to Google Health and other health-record systems to allow patients to exchange vital health information with their doctors and other health services professionals in real-time.

"Our partnership with IBM will help both providers and users gain access to their device data in a highly simplified and automated fashion," said Sameer Samat, director for Google Health. "IBM has taken an important step in providing software that enables device manufacturers and hospitals to easily upload recorded data into a PHR platform, such as Google Health."

IBM developed the software based on guidelines from the Continua Health Alliance, which is dedicated to enabling interoperable personal healthcare products and solutions. The software is also based in part on key open-source software available now from Eclipse and Open Health Tools, which are open-source communities dedicated to supporting advancements in healthcare.

"With close to a quarter of the world's population overweight, more than 600 million people with some form of chronic disease and millions more reaching retirement age, the time for greater personal health management is now," said Dave Whitlinger, president of the Continua Health Alliance. "Continua member companies like IBM and Google are working on real solutions that will empower consumers and healthcare professionals to access and share information quickly and easily through connected products and solutions. Together, we can create a new marketplace, improve health and quality of life, and advance personal telehealth worldwide."

The new IBM solution will:

• Support a wide variety of use cases, including chronic disease management, health and wellness and elderly care, in the United States and countries and health-services enterprises around the world.
• Leverage the power of services-oriented architectures so that partners can quickly build increasing volumes of flexible solutions for healthcare consumers and services providers based on modular components.
• Support the rapid growth of open standards through the power of the Continua Alliance.
• Support the development of solutions using the Google Health open platform.