Health Care 2.0?
Both Google and Microsoft are planning to forays into health care information, according to a widely circulated article in the New York Times. Their exact plans remain unclear to the public, and possibly to the companies' staff as well. These endeavors, such as the neo-Google 23andMe, are likely to have mixed benefits. Like the aggregation of other forms of data online, particularly the preferences and opinions of millions of individuals in the "Web 2.0" model, health and genetic information could empower individuals and even assist researchers.
But this comes at a cost. Information formerly considered private becomes available to the public and particularly to marketers. Health and genetic data is fundamentally different than, say, one's reading habits. It can impact the decisions of prospective employers, insurers, and even spouses. Additionally, the individual can learn things, such as disease susceptibility, that can be difficult to process when isolated from a broader medical and clinical context, a challenge that we are already confronting with the rise of at-home genetic tests.