Unhappy with the Google Advisory Group on Medicine:
Via MedicExchange, and thanks to Stuart Hall (the author) for the link:
Google’s decision to set up an advisory group has sparked controversy as well as congratulation. While the lack of nursing professionals or health librarians has caused a storm of protest on health blogs, it also appears it’s also a ‘no show’ from the radiology community too.
Product Marketing Manager Missy Krasner announced the formation of the ‘Google Health Advisory Council’ on 27 June with the following laudable aim:
“We want to help users make more empowered and informed healthcare decisions, and have been steadily developing our ability to make our search results more medically relevant and more helpful to users.” More generally the mission is to “better understand the problems consumers and providers face every day and offer feedback on product ideas and development”.
The stated composition includes healthcare experts from “provider organizations, consumer and disease-based groups, physician organizations, research institutions, policy foundations, and other fields”.
While the list of participants is impressive there’s no obvious representation from medical imaging professionals. In response the head of the American College for Radiology (ACR) Arl Van Moore wrote to Google to say it was pleased to hear that the advisory group was being established: “However, it is unfortunate, and frankly quite puzzling, that Google has apparently chosen not include a representative from radiology, a vital, and increasingly far reaching area of medicine.
A swing and a miss for Google on this one, it seems.
As Radiology is the fastest growing, most robust field of medicine at the moment (and it appaers that will continue unabated well into the future) that was indeed a major blunder on Google’s part.
CBS Ghost Whisperer will be airing an episode this Friday dealing with medical profession and the hardships that medical professionals must endure. The episode will also touch base on dying and the different cultural views surrounding death via terminal illnesses. You should all check it out at 8pm ET/PT