Google is exploring a health record tool for patients

Anyway, this is Google. There’s no way they’re planning to client-side encrypt. Even if they did, they’d eventually realize it wasn’t generating enough indirect ad revenue to be too big to kill. At that point they’d ungracefully shut it down.

Until advances in mathematics or computation obsolete the crypto. We might decide that it doesn't matter within each respective patient's lifetime (a debate) but that is getting longer and longer.

>> Google cloud provides protection from the actual privacy threats

Even if everyone in the clinic uses the same credentials?

This was true back in the 1990's. But hardly ever happens anymore. Healthcare operations are very strictly regulated, and everyone, even small offices, goes through security training. If they don't, they lose access to the things they need to operate.

The company I work for puts everyone in the company through HIPAA training once a year, and IT security training every six months. It doesn't matter if you're a receptionist, or a doctor, or the Director of IT. Everyone gets the training.

I don't think I'm unusual that there are things about health (my own and in general) that I've searched on Google that I've never told or asked anyone.

It's honestly the sort of thing where you should have a standard created by an independent group designing a standard, which is then implemented by the government (handling storage and release of records to local providers).

I hate to say it (because it makes me groan) but I really think a trustless blockchain based solution would work best where medical professionals/researchers require active consent before pulling your records, a trustless form of anonymization/pseudonymization is built into the platform and an immutable record of every query made and why is held forever.

Hospitals and service providers in America have no incentive to do anything that would reduce switching costs and increase the quality of care that you get if you do switch. Moreover, since this is a low-information landscape with respect to both pricing and outcomes, consumers have little way of differentiating and thus service providers also have less incentive to adopt practices that improve outcomes.

Then you have to consider multiple decades of paper records, and records from other systems. Then there's many hospital systems composed of multiple health entities (hospitals, clinics, stand-alone emergency rooms). Some hospital systems span across multiple states and each state have their own set of rules (don't forget about the federal rules as well - HIPAA).

Then when you are building out your EHR system. You have to take into consideration the aspect from the doctor. There are many specialties within medicine. An EHR record from the point of view of an emergency medicine doctor vs a radiologist is very different.