Google's Health Council

I see both Google and Quicken as emerging players in the digital health arena (Please refer to my January 7, 2007 posting.). Today, Google announced the formation of it's Health Advisory Council. According to an article in the Health IT Strategist, the mission of the Council is to enable Google to better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development. The Council is comprised of IT "movers and shakers" in the USA, including AARP's John Rother. It shall be interesting to follow their deliberations.

According to the news release, the panel will be chaired by Dean Ornish, the founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. Other members of the panel are: RAND Health research scientist Douglas Bell; Cleveland Clinic Chief Executive Officer Toby Cosgrove; Health Technology Center CEO Molly Coye; Former Congressional Budget Office Director Dan Crippen; Wal-Mart Executive Vice President of Risk Management, Benefits and Sustainability Linda Dillman; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School Chief Information Officer and Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel Chairman John Halamka; U.S. News & World Report Health Editor and Columnist and a former head of the National Institutes of Health Bernadine Healy; American Medical Association Chief Operating Officer Bernie Hengesbaugh; AAFP Executive Vice President Douglas Henley; University of California at San Francisco Vice Chancellor of Medical Affairs and School of Medicine Dean and former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Vice President and Director of Health Care Group John Lumpkin; AARP Group Executive Officer of Policy and Strategy John Rother; Kaiser Permanente Vice President of Online Services Anna-Lisa Silvestre; FasterCures President Greg Simon; California HealthCare Foundation President and CEO Mark Smith; Palo Alto Medical Foundation Vice President and Chief Medical Information Officer and American Medical Informatics Association Board of Directors Chairman Paul Tang; Genetic Alliance President and CEO Sharon Terry; American College of Physicians Executive Vice President and CEO John Tooker; Lance Armstrong Foundation President Doug Ulman; UCSF Department of Medicine Associate Chairman and UCSF Medical Center Chief of Medical Service Robert Wachter; and I'm Too Young for This! Cancer Foundation for Young Adults Founder and Executive Director Matthew Zachary.