Google Health Shuttered

According to its blog, Google is shutting down the “Google Health” personal health records project due to slow adoption.

The Internet/IT Healthcare space is littered with successful entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies  (Steve Case, Google, etc…) who have underestimated the complexities of healthcare as well as and their potential impact on the market.

These are very smart people.  I give them all credit for trying to come in a fix a system that is radically broken due to years of turf building and erecting barriers to entry by a wide array of players.

It’s a shame our industry has a history of chewing up and spitting out highly charged and successful innovators, rather than capitalizing on their talents.  The innovations and changes these entrepreneurs develop represent progressive evolutionary thinking.  In any other industry or environment this is how progress gets made.

Like it or not, due to the failure of market forces, it will be government who forces the “break up” of the status quo in healthcare, and it will happen when the pain is simply to great to continue on the current path.  Incremental change and improvement would be less painful, but whether change is incremental or sweeping – it is coming.

Health care service provided by Google comes to premature end | Articles.