Google Health Open Platform Is Great — Or Awful 179
JackPowers writes "The Google Health APIs enable portable, standardized, open architecture, extensible personal health records, which is nice but boring if they're just used to manage the paperwork of the doctor/patient relationship. But once the data is set free, all kinds of Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 apps are possible. This article looks ahead 10 years at Best Case Scenarios. A follow-up article lists the Worst Case Scenarios."
Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
This is already a big problem with credit companies becoming so pervasive. It's also bad enough that private companies are leading the American military around by the nose. But that pales in comparison to the actual, direct, and personal limits imposed by something like the system the article is talking about.
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly this practice should be outlawed and companies that do so need to be fined heavily.
also the fact taht your credit report is probably the MOST INNACURATE information you have on you and companies make decisions based on this horribly inaccurate data.
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A criminal background check, ok, not a big deal for the most part and can save a company a lot of potential headaches and/or liability.
A credit check though? What good does that do for a company? Actually, wouldn't most companies prefer employees with less than good credit ratings as they would likely be less able to leave the job?
Piss test too you say. And why can't this be left to law enforcement? Pretty serious invasion of privacy, and if there's n
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It depends... if that person is going to be handling a company credit card or something, or otherwise have some autonomy with company funds, I can see a credit check being reasonable.
Your credit has NO bearing on your moral structure. My score's shot due to a divorce, but while the opportunities to steal may've presented themselves, one fact remains: It's not MY money. I have the keys and alarm codes to many of our clients. Never was a problem, even during a homeless stint. Criminal background checks would be more appropriate here, IMHO, rather than trying to glean one's moral fortitude from their spending histories...
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*She* got the divorce. *I* got the bill. Falling for/trusting a liar doesn't mean I'm untrustworthy.
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1- A proper drug test requires access to the medical records of the patient--otherwise there is no way to discriminate between controlled substances used legally (by prescription) vs illegally.
2- Urine testing reveals a large amount of additional medical information about the patient's condition beyond just drug use. It's more like looking at a bank statement than a credit report--you see it all. That information is private. And, only a handful of states reg
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What fucking business is it of yours if I drink at the weekend?
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Define impossible. My father in law doesn't have a credit rating. He lives in a rural area where most deals are done in cash. But he has to work harder and has a lower standard of living because of his choices.
You have a right to compete in the job market. But you don't have a right for a job.
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
An insightful comment if ever I read one, but I'm afraid you're a few generations late. As a society we gave up believing in government, institutions of power or authority, religeon, civic responsibility and most all notions of tradition, and adopted instead a belief in individuality and self-fullfilment. That doesn't leave us with much, does it?
If the current trend continues and free market idealogues get to rule the day, we should expect to have everything from infrastructure to institutions ruled and run entirely by corporations (to the extent they don't already), and we'll all be working for Taco Bell or for The Brawndo Corporation.
The situation can also be viewed political terms. A good portion of the electorate really does believe that government is evil, that government can't possibly do anything as efficiently or as cheaply as business, and that taxes infringe on their God given rights, but they're only too happy to let the Walmarts of the world take over provided they can maintain the illusion they've kept a few extra dollars in their own pockets.
The people who complain about undue corporate influence on government probably don't notice that they've succumbed to those same influences in their own lives, but they might notice when there's nothing left to sell off, somebody else holds all the cards and those free-market choices they've been promised come up short.
Google, I think, is doing what any business does, and that's fulfulling an unmet need and making or trying to make a profit in doing so. The question is why we're not doing it ourselves?
Solution to already solved problem. (Score:3, Informative)
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Central clearinghouses might be useful, a la the credit reporting agencies. When someone has records on you, they publish that fact without publishing the actual records.
If you don't see this as a flaw in your plan, I don't know what to tell you.
A lot of people go get mental health care and pay out of their own pocket so that it isn't 'in the system'. The same goes for various other types of treatments.
Centralizing that information takes away control from us as individuals.
You haven't thought this through completely. (Score:3, Informative)
See: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa [hhs.gov]
Centralizing that information takes away control from us as individuals.
I specifically stated that your medical records themselves would not be centralized and that your consent to release would be required and would further fall under the clinical discretion of each of your medical providers.
The only thing I was suggesting is that for emergency purposes, it would be possible to quickly locate records sources that you have explicitly authorized. Whether or not any particular
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google is not to be trusted (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't have to be this way. I'm usually a big free market believer, but I'm also a vet who has been through the VA healthcare system (unfortunately named VistA). Here [fredtrotter.com] is a good piece that mentions the VA's system and how it is being used by an FOSS project to get some of this under control.
I don't particularly like Google, but I like the US healthcare system even less.
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And then there's the matter of how they treat the sensitive information that they demand up front and without compromise.
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You can do something about bad credit. Most health problems are outwith your control (cancer, car accident, genetic problems ...)
Awful? (Score:3, Funny)
Great, Web *3.0* (Score:5, Funny)
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What, everyone gets bingo too fast on their Web 2.0 bingo cards [0bingo.com] so the next version of bingo cards needs new entries and thus is Web 3.0?
Re:Great, Web *3.0* (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Great, Web *3.0* (Score:4, Funny)
A synergistic development model.
Grassroots support.
Enterprise level uptime and support (obviously).
This technology promises to create a paradigm shift in the way we think about web services.
agreed with the worst case. (Score:2)
Re:agreed with the worst case. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless this is mandated by somebody or other, you're free to post or not post whatever you want on Google health.
That's fine, but it does severely limit the usefulness of the product. As a physician, I'm not going to be inclined to spend much time looking at a highly edited version of somebody's medical history. There is a reason we ask for records from doctors or hospitals. It's far too easy to simply edit out the uncomfortable bits of your life. That of course, is perfectly within your rights, but my job is too look at the whole history, not bits and pieces.
I don't see this as taking off much in the professional sector - it may be popular in the direct-to-consumer advertising space (which is why I cynically suspect it exists), but it's too limited to be much use professionally. Not useless, but very limited.
The truly scary part is that the "10 worst" scenarios are much more likely to come true that the "10 best".
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I've seen large parts of mine and most of seems worthless to me. Lots of redundancy, lots of unreadable scratching. Medications and treatments that didn't work but contain no follow up that would communicate that.
And I'm not very old and I've been in relativ
but you're an amateur (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as logical as thinking that it would take Linus Torvalds as long to understand a kernel patch as J. Random User who's never coded a line in his life. Or that your car mechanic needs to carefully listen to every sound your jalopy makes to know whether it needs a valve job. Or that the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic would have to get out a tuning fork and go carefully around to listen to each of his 150 musicians to know whether the orchestra is playing in tune.
Re:agreed with the worst case. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm in Alaska, come up and visit. Bring your harpoon....
"Taking the time to read your entire medical history" may or may not be particularly relevant. If you are young and healthy without significant ongoing issues, it may be perfectly unnecessary. I likely don't care about the details of your tonsilectomy at age 6 (I might, however, if you had a significant anesthetic reaction).
But you bring up a good point that's generally obfuscated in these debates: You may not want every detail of a person's medical history at any given time. Sometimes you do. Having to wade through tons of extraneous detail makes it easy to miss important tidbits. Getting a 200 page printout from a 6 day hospitalization with everything including the janitor's notes doesn't help me much. Putting that in machine readable format helps me maybe a bit. What we don't have is an underlying, consistent framework for electronic medical records that's used by everyone and has the capability to organize a huge amount of information into a generally usable format.
There are baby steps out there, but it's a huge chicken and egg problem for the field. I personally see the digitalization of medical records happening *very* slowly - over the next 20 years or so. And that's a feature, not a bug folks. There are absolutely huge societal issues to be dealt with before we give some uber-governmental department the holy grail of databases. I'd rather have the current fragmented system then allow every government and corporate entity start data mining for whatever purpose of the week they feel important (or profitable).
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I can see how the fragmentation helps protect the data, but I'm not sure whether the benefits outweigh the risks. I'd like it if an ambulance crew could pull my records up in some protable terminal and see "Allergic to Sulfa" in a prominent position.
As it is, if I forget or can't communicate that or whatever else, it would probably never be known because the last time I was given sulfa I was about 6 years old and I lived in Angola (Africa)
Re:agreed with the worst case. (Score:4, Informative)
No ambulance in the world is going to give you an antibiotic. They're going to wait until they get to the ER and let the doc decide. Even if I, for some reason, decide that I'm giving you a drug you subsequently decide to have an anaphylactic reaction to it, well, that's why I have steroids and endotracheal tubes. If you're that sick we ask you the AMPLE history (Allergies, Medications, Past (Medical History), Last Meal, Event. If we can't get it out of you, well, then your likely sick enough to be run through some rather standardized stabilization protocols until we figure out just what you manage to do to yourself. Usually, it's readily apparent. If it's really complicated, it's likely that you are stable enough for the docs and staff to work through the problem bit by bit.
Yes, rapid access to medical information can be important and very occasionally life saving (but likely not). But Google Health isn't going to work for this. If you are unfortunate to have a serious medical condition, a small laminated paper with your doctor's name, brief past history, medication and allergies and maybe an old EKG shrunk down would do wonders. Stick in in your wallet. We always check that looking for cash, checks and your insurance card....
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Having a standard format and infrastructure for requesting and exchanging digital records doesn't mean having a single entity (government or otherwise) with access to all the data.
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And considering HIPPA, you would be in deep doo doo if you posted anyone's info (you know that, of course, but others here may not)
What I would like for MY doctor to do would be to give me a CD of my medical records when I visit him. I'm 56, most of my medical records simply no longer exist. Like everyone else, doctors retire and records get lost.
But I don't want it on Google. I wa
Meaningless buzzwords run amok (Score:3, Funny)
Web 3.0? That's just silly.
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Oh Hell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh Hell (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't forget that it has to use the Wisdom of Clowns.
Weasels (Score:2)
At least until PETA complains it's cruel to the application...
[badum-ching]
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Given the subject of the story, maybe we can call it GASLAMP? (GAS=Google AJAX Something...)
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The ideas are cool (Score:5, Insightful)
But that doesn't mean they're good. Diet monitoring? Try this [freshmeat.net], or any other free web service that does it *without* needing your medical history. Fitness Monitoring? Doesn't Wii Fit do this? How about a simple spreadsheet? Travel? Is it that hard to look at The Weather Channel [weather.com] before you leave?
Honestly, this just sounds like candy-coating a terrible idea so that people will buy into it. None of the ideas on that page are lacking a non-Google implementation assuming you're not too lazy to do some footwork.
Then again, if you are too lazy, maybe whatever ill effects you receive from using Google's service are deserved...
Great - or awful? (Score:3, Funny)
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Ideally they would have been for good or for awesome.
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With apologies to Colbert,
Google Health Open Platform: great platform, or greatest platform?
worst case scenario? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like a win-win to me.
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I welcome the idea that those with healthy lifestyles shouldn't be subsidizing those with unhealthy lifestyles. Plus, there is then an obvious economic incentive to become healthier.
Maybe I'm just naive, but it seems to me that the *only* way to prevent healthy people from having to subsidize unhealthy people is to (1) allow health care providers to refuse to treat unhealthy people, AND (2) make everybody pay for their own health care. Anything less than that will involve some hidden subsidization via taxes, etc. (Please note I'm not saying I think it should work that way, just that subsidization is always going to be part of health care).
Also, sometimes bad health has nothing to do
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SCHOOL RECORDS
The Turner Twins' immunization records are forwarded to their school each September. Throughout the year, their schoolmates' anonymized records are linked to the school to keep track of ear infections, strep throat, lice and sports injuries. Schools publish aggregate wellness data to attract new students, and education watchdogs lobby for funding based on overall student health indices.
School funding based on how often the children get ill? No, thanks.
INSURANCE
Trader Ted shops for insurance by selectively releasing his Google Health record on-line. He pays for regular care through a Health Savings Account, but health insurance companies bid for his catastrophic coverage based on his authenticated medical history, diet and exercise records.
No mention of what happens to someone with a disease though.
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Or go to work for a drug company, or a healthcare provider. They see an economic incentive in keeping people in poor health.
Re:worst case scenario? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we can ban alcohol nationally, since that worked so well last time.
Oh, I know. Mandatory exercise. Not running fast enough? Well, attack dogs are cheaper that what you're costing medicare, so enough with your rights.
The idea the economics of health care must trump individual rights leads to complete regulation and control of everyone's lives as a "cost saving measure". It's totalitarianism.
But I suspect you know that, since your sig line seems to indicate you're trolling.. if so, well done.
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Just like corpoate pollution -- when the cost is externalized (because someone else bears the brunt of ecological damage and cleanup), it makes sense for companies to pollute. When they need to bear the cost of pollution (or at least account for the cost, v
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and mine
We seem to agree that the phenomenon exists, although we see
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If our healthcare system does not work economically, we are screwed. I do not want people, six generatio
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We could also see something like what the NHS is trying in the UK [independent.co.uk], preventing people with "bad lifestyles" from receiving treatment.
Seems like that would be self defeating. It would create a class of people who are forced, via taxes, to pay into a system that doesn't benefit them. That doesn't bode well for long term stability or viability.
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Harsh, yes. Cruel, maybe. Necessary, I think so.
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I don't think any of the things you mentioned should be banned. I do believe, however, that allowing people to externalize the costs of their behavior (whether they are smokers, polluters, poachers, or anything else) means that people take actions that are highly inefficient and detrimental from a societal point of view. If we want people to make decisions that benefit themselves, while not unduly causing harm or costing others, we need to make su
think it through a little more (Score:4, Insightful)
More plausibly, how about someone in government thinks that lifestyle X is bad for you, and starts handing out tax penalties and rebates accordingly -- but he's wrong. Not like we've ever had any health fads that turned out to be nonsense, right? And no government bureaucrat would dream of making decisions when he doesn't really have enough information to make a good one, right?
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I think you nailed the problem with totalitarianism.
For an example, take the bureaucrat working for an elected official. The bureaucrat comes out with some boneheaded rule about each citizen must not eat meat as it's very unhealthy.
Once symptoms of B12 deficiency [wikipedia.org] start showing up, there's at least a chance the elected official will re
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Overruled, unconstitutional. How about instead we do not punish everyone for the actions of an inconsiderate few who decide that having unprotected sex or using septic needles is ok? I do believe in the need and utility for a public safety net... but I cannot condone allowing people to have no negative repercussions for behavior that costs society a
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this system that you consider a 'win-win' is actually a more tightly controlled authoritarian system than the one in which you currently live. the only practical advantage here would be for the HMOs and insurance companies. they would be better able to price coverage.
i don't think it would require a great deal of imaginati
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Yeah? Give me (actually, give my friends who have no health care) taxpayer-supported medical care like the civilized world has and we'll talk. Now, when you said "emergency services" I thought smokers, and wondered about how various fires start. Google helped little. But one page [marshfield.wi.us] (listed at the bottom of Google's first search page [google.com]) suggests that we put a high ta
Re:worst case scenario? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you are on the enforcement end, and not on the end being forced to give up all of your rights as a rational being, everything will always look win-win.
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Who said anything about being forced to give up rights?
How about this -- if you smoke, you pay a cigarette tax that is put into a fund to be used only for medical care. That way, you don't trample on my right to be secure in my property, when I get taxed more to pay for your care when you are suffering from lung cancer, heart disease, or any of t
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The original poster in reference to the article's worst case scenario.
"How about this -- if you smoke, you pay a cigarette tax that is put into a fund to be used only for medical care. That way, you don't trample on my right to be secure in my property, when I get taxed more to pay for your care when you are suffering from lung cancer, heart disease, or any of the other illnesses smoking causes."
Your first sentence contradicts your second. Yo
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I was the original poster. And I did not mention giving up rights.
Are you deliberately misunderstanding? When a smoker smokes, they are costing me money because we have a public safety net
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You said the quoted situation sounded like a good idea. The quoted situation involved the regulation of what people can and cannot choose to do to their own bodies. Are you saying this does not violate their natural liberty [wikipedia.org]?
"When a smoker smokes, they are costing me money because we have a public safety net that subsidizes their treatment for illnesses caused by smoking. Rather than have *me* and *you* and everyone else pay for it, wh
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I expanded on the original quote from TFA. What makes sense is that people should need to pay the cost for their decisions, rather than getting to externalize it to the general population.
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But externalization of some costs is a good idea. (Roads for example). Both for reasons of efficiency (you can't make everything a toll road) and fairness (a good road structure ultimately benefits everyone). And any sort of tax incentive for a "healthy lifestyle" will prevent certain things from being externalized tha
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Your proposed replacement violates the individual smoker's right to their property, just as the original regulation violated your right to your property. They are both violations of the same right.
"How does making people responsible for the effetcs of their actions violate their rights?"
Forcing someone to give up a portion of their productivity to the government, or anyone else, is a viola
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I believe that taxation with consent is justified. I believe that social safety networks are justified, necessary, and profitable to the country at large.
Given these items, I believe it is unjustified for people who willingly take action that has costs the public, not to have to contribute towards those costs.
Those who speed should pay fines. Those who drive drunk should pay fines. Those who pollute should pay for remediation. Those who kil
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First of all, some people who use the public safety net won't "deserve" it. It's not all cute orphans and single mothers whose husband/boyfriend dumped her. There's a public safety net anyway. Second, cigarettes are already taxed extra for public health reasons.
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This seems facially reasonable, but is related to why I will never support government funded healthcare :
It allows the government (and by extension, a majority vote) to dictate what you do with your life by making it incr
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Careful of the slippery slope (Score:2)
Some people are overweight because they eat too much and don't exercise enough. Others are overweight because they (truthfully) have a glandular problem. Some, like my sister, are the result of the epileptic drugs she takes which lower her metabolism. Should these lat
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In Other News (Score:3, Interesting)
E-Records and good thing but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Things Get Serious...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Romeo and Juliet share STD data. They are both clean (or so the record says). Great. They can now enjoy sex with each other.
Then, over time, they decide that this relationship is really a great thing and they want to start looking into marriage. They get married. Everybody is happy.
Now that they're married (because nobody would be stupid enough to share this type of data BEFORE marriage...would they?), they share their genetic information with each other as they are talking about children. But, what's this?! Juliet sees that Romeo has a high propensity for Down Syndrome (or any other "disease" - take your pick). Well, this isn't good.
So, instead, Juliet decides to get a divorce and go on her merry way.
The End
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Is this really bad, compared to alternatives like someone like Juliet that can't cop
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These aren't relatively minor issues like a club-foot or cleft palate; these are genetic disorders that often fatal or crippling. And I think it's
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Why do you hate Darwin?
Seriously, what's wrong with a little unnatural selection? Let the 'purestrain' people breed with eachother, and the rest of us can interbreed. How else are we going to get speciation within a 100 generations so that we can have sustainable populations of dwarves, g
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That's a tragedy for Romeo, but I much prefer it to the tragedy of bringing a kid with, say, cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs disease into the world. Or Down syndrome, though that's more closely tied to the age of the mother than to genetics.
The thing about the major genetic diseases I've mentioned is that in most cases, they're recessive, which means that a variety
In other news (Score:2)
worst idea ever. (Score:2, Interesting)
good vs bad. (Score:2)
Grandma Mini
How about the Chinese , or Russian , or German or American ( what have you ) have legalized euthanasia. Grandma mini's medical records indicate that she has become far too much of a drain on the nationalized medical system and that the taxes she and all of her immediate family pay into the government are causing a drain on society. Since obviously grandma mini can no lo
Highly convenient. (Score:2)
While a private company developing technology like this could seem questionable; what I'd like to know is why has the medical industry NOT took the initative to cre
They're smarter than the average bear. (Score:2)
Perhaps because they don't want patients to start lying to their doctors because they're afraid of their insurance company going all Scrooge on them?
Already there. (Score:2)
Making money off your data (Score:2)
better get ready then (Score:2)
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Web 1.0 was "It's a series of tubes."
Web 2.0 is "It's a cloud."
Web 3.0 will be "It's pixie dust and fairie magic".