Why did Google Health suffer a heart attack?
There has been a lot of internet talk about why Google Health failed. Numerous of this conversations dwell on Google. What did Google do wrong? This is a gigantic behemoth of a company, right? Google owns information, so why couldn’t they control health information? Why couldn’t they engage users to record their personal health information?
Unlike the magnitude of information on the internet that is accessible, searchable, and just simply already there, personal health information is not. The whole premise of Google Health relies upon people being interested in their health, and investing time in recording their health. With matters at hand consisting of the uncontrollable obesity epidemic, lung cancer due to uninhibited smoking, and the general lack of exercise found throughout American culture, it’s no surprise that Google Health did not succeed.
Recording your own health information online is a radical idea to the majority of Americans. If it is to succeed, it has to be innovative. We need to make the experience of entering personal health data FUN and EXCITING. Make it into a game. Make it social. Ask you friends to go on a bike ride with you, and then record in your social network for others to be jealous of you. So jealous that they go out and join their own bike ride with their friends, too.
Innovation, with a new way of thinking, is key here. This is why Google Health failed.