Members of the House Energy and Commerce committee grilled Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, and Google attorney Michael Yang for about two hours. After the meeting, several of the Representatives expressed their unhappiness with Google’s answers on a variety of privacy issues — questions brought on by Google’s recent announcement that it will combine all of its privacy policies into one, which will allow the company to share user information across its services.

That last point, according to Representative Mary Bono Mack, may leave Google in violation of HIPAA, a law that protects how personal health information may be shared. Bono Mack explained her concerns to USA Today:

“…say you do a Google search for cervical cancer and you forget to sign out. Are you being tracked across all of the other products, and if so, that’s a violation of HIPPA. We’ve gone to great lengths in our society to protect people’s medical information. That question was raised.”

Bono Mack is suggesting that Google might be violating HIPAA if it remembers the “cervical cancer” search after the user moves on from search to another Google product, like Gmail or YouTube (or any other).

But is Google actually compelled to follow the HIPAA requirements? According to the Health & Human Services website, the law applies to groups that meet the definition of a “covered entity” — health care providers (like doctors and nurses), health plans (like insurance companies and HMOs) and health care clearinghouses.

Google is certainly not a health care provider or a health plan, but is it a clearinghouse? My non-expert reading of the definition suggests the answer is “no.”

Google has been involved in health information via its Google Health product, but that just shut down on January 1st. Even when it was active, Google said it wasn’t bound by HIPAA. Here’s the opening sentence of the old/current Google Health privacy policy:

Unlike a doctor or health plan, Google Health is not regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that establishes data confidentiality standards for patient health information.

Furthermore, Google’s new privacy policy, which takes effect on March 1st, includes language that seems to say ads won’t be personalized based on health-related activity:

When showing you tailored ads, we will not associate a cookie or anonymous identifier with sensitive categories, such as those based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health.

Bono Mack tells USA Today that there will be more Congressional hearings about online privacy and that she “pressed” Google to be there. But, based on my non-expert reading of the law, the HIPAA angle may not get very far in those hearings.

We’ve been covering the non-search elements of Google’s new privacy policy on our sister site, Marketing Land. See below for several related articles offering background and other angles.

Related Entries

• No, You Don’t Need To Fear The Google Privacy Changes: A Reality Check
• Google “Myth Busts” Microsoft’s Privacy Claims
• Microsoft Slams Google Privacy Changes With “Putting People First” Ad Campaign
• Google Tells Congress: Users Can Opt-Out Of New Privacy Policy By Not Logging In
• House Committee Has Privacy Questions For Google; Google Says Bring It On
• Google’s New Terms Of Service & Privacy Policy: Anything You Do May Be Used To Target You?

(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

In a blog post announcing the news, Google says the product didn’t catch on as it had hoped:

Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven’t found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people.

User data stored in Google Health will remain available for download for an extra year, until January 1, 2013. There are a number of different download options detailed in Google’s blog post. Any any data not downloaded after January 1, 2013 will be permanently deleted, Google says.

Google Health launched in early 2008. As we wrote at the time, there was obvious value in what Google Health offered, but legitimate questions about whether the end user would go through the “heavy lifting” required to extract that value. Today’s decision seems to confirm that not enough users were willing to do that.

Google’s announcement today also says that PowerMeter, a somewhat similar tool that allowed users to put data about personal energy consumption online, is shutting down later this year. It’ll be available until September 16, 2011.

Google says the new results are available in these countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. They hope to expand further in the future.

(1) Google Translate added Latin as a new language. Google said, “although considered a “dead language” by many, Latin is still studied by hundreds of thousands of students worldwide and is the predecessor to many modern tongues.” I am sure those who study in this language welcome it to Google Translate.

(2) Google has updated their flu shot location search in collaboration with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS). The flu season is right around the corner and it might pay for you to get your shot early, if possible.

(3) Google Alerts for Video added 40 languages. Google Alerts added video alerts a few years ago, but only in the English language. Now it is available in English and 39 additional languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.

Users can track progress with their blood pressure, cholesterol, coffee intake, weight, and so on. Even more, users can set goals and watch their progression to meeting those goals. So if you want to track your progress in cutting down on mayonnaise, you can easily do that and see how it impacts your weight and blood pressure. In addition, you can add manual notes to your health journal.

Google also added “several new partners” to Google Health, including Fitbit, maker of a wearable device that captures health and wellness data such as steps taken, calories burned and sleep quality; and CardioTrainer, one of the top mobile apps for tracking fitness activity and weight loss.

For more information, see the Google Blog and here are some pictures:

The study, published in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, examined the top ten search results on Google and Yahoo for ten common sports medicine diagnoses — phrases like “Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear,” “Rotator cuff tear,” and “Tennis elbow” — and analyzed the type of pages/sites that ranked highly and the accuracy/completeness of the information.

In terms of content, Dr. Karunakar says, nonprofit sites scored the highest, then academic sites (including medical journal sites), and then certain non-sales-oriented commercial sites (such as WebMD and eMedicine). The least accurate information sources were newspaper articles and personal web sites. Commercial sites with a financial interest in the diagnosis, such as those sponsored by companies selling a drug or treatment device, were very common but frequently incomplete.

“About 20 percent of the sites that turned up in the top ten results were sponsored sites,” Dr. Karunakar says. “These site owners are motivated to promote their product, so the information found there may be biased. We also found that these sites rarely mentioned the risks or complications associated with treatment as they are trying to represent their product in the best possible light.”

The study warns consumers and health professionals about relying on commercial health sites, except for the “most reputable sites” like WebMD and eMedicine.

The debate over accuracy and trustworthiness of health information found via search isn’t new. Microsoft has written about “cyberchondria” — how online health information sometimes makes us feel worse. Dilbert creator Scott Adams took a different stance in late 2008, writing about how Google helped him find treatment for a speech defect. There’s little doubt the debate will continue.

Today Google is expanding that search feature to include medications.

When users search on a prescription or generic drug (e.g., “Lipitor” or “acetaminophen”) a summary and description will appear at the top of search results. The summary links to National Institutes of Health (NIH) content and more specific information such as “side effects.” (The National Institutes of Health in turn license this data from The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.)

The content and feature is US only. Google declined to say whether it would roll out to other countries. I would imagine that reliable content partnerships are a challenge to find in many countries around the world.

I spoke briefly this morning to Roni Zeiger, MD, Google’s “Chief Health Strategist,” about the new feature. He characterized Health as a key vertical in terms of consumer interest and query volume. Bing designated Health as one of its “strategic verticals” as well.

By making this type of information more visible — and reliable — in search results Google may drive additional consumer queries for drugs and their side effects.

In terms of advertising, the IAB shows Phrama and Health Care as a significant online ad-spending category.

At 4 percent of ad revenues, Health/Pharma represented just over $900 million in online ad spending in 2009 according to the IAB. And if search is roughly 47 percent of all online ad spending (or was in 2009 ) then the paid search share of this online health advertising pie is a little over $426 million.

Having said all that Google is trying to serve a perceived consumer need for authoritative health information and any advertising benefits that accrue to the company are a secondary matter. But that’s the beauty of the model, serve the consumer and the revenues follow.

Bing was first with its announcement:

Today along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Institute of Medicine, the Bing Health team is participating in the Community Health Data Initiative and unveiling the new Bing Health Map Application.  This new application will allow you to overlay health data onto Bing Maps so you can better understand and visualize the health of a community.

There is an impressive list of data that can be displayed on the map, including things like infant mortality and various cancer rates, homicides and other categories of health-related data.

Shortly after the Bing post and announcement this morning Google “answered” with this post:

HHS has published useful data about communities, hospitals and nursing homes and made it available for download. As a demonstration project, we combined some of this information using Google Fusion Tables, a database service in the cloud that makes it easy to explore, visualize and share structured data. Using Fusion Tables we created a customized map to display information from the database. For example, you can see a map of “heart friendly” and “people friendly” hospitals, based on statistics from HHS . . .

The Google map is less developed than its Bing counterpart but I would imagine that will change quickly.

Since last Wednesday, the New York Times reports, Google has been showing the toll-free number of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for this query. It also shows up for “how to commit suicide,” but not for “should i commit suicide.”

These queries are cases where Google’s algorithm may be too good; in the image above, the first three organic results below the phone number all answer the query perhaps too well (although the second article isn’t as direct as the first and third).

A similar tweak has also been in place for a few months on a search for [poison control] and similar queries.

Google’s response here is to show the toll-free number of the American Association of Poison Control Centers. It was this kind of query that pushed Google to tweak its search results. Dr. Roni Zeiger, a product manager at Google Health, told the Times, “A mother wrote in a suggestion to us — her daughter had swallowed something that she thought was dangerous, and she had a hard time finding poison control…That got us thinking.”

The response to queries like “poison control” are a natural extension of Google’s “one box” product — showing the Poison Control Center phone number matches the query and serves the searcher. But you could argue that Google isn’t answering its users’ query by providing a suicide prevention number on queries like “ways to commit suicide.” It’s a cold-hearted argument, and not one I’m willing to make, but I can’t think of any other occasion in which Google willingly shows the opposite of what the searcher wanted.

In any case, Zeiger tells the Times that the company is “starting relatively conservatively” in selecting queries to respond to in this way — a statement that sounds like more answers like this may be on the way.

Postscript: Danny Sullivan points me toward this compelling 2003 article in which a Wired reporter writes about the stream of queries that Google sees every day, and the employee whose job is (was?) to keep an eye on that stream. The end of that article (on page 2 if you click) involves a suicide-related query, which leads the Google employee to indicate that he’ll “attach” the right sites if Google doesn’t help answer the searcher’s question. (Google later clarified to say they didn’t mean a manual “attach”-ing of the right sites, but rather an algorithmic tweak. This was in the days when Google was very hesitant to reveal whether or not there was manual editing of rankings going on.)

When the locator loads, you many need to manually enter your location. Do so using the “Change Location” option:

After doing your search, a red needle icon shows where to get regular seasonal flu shots, a blue needle for the H1N1 vaccine or colored both ways if both are offered at a particular location (so many needles — don’t let your kids see this map before you go!):

Click on any of the icons, and you’ll be shown more information about that location:

A list along the left-hand side of the map also gives more details about a particular place and reflects all the locations on the map. Many of these are pharmacies, but Google says more locations will be added:

We’ve been working with HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine (both the nasal-spray vaccine and the shot). At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting. We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you’ll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle.

Unfortunately, you can’t tell at-a-glance if a particular location is out of stock on flu vaccine. For example, in the map above, you can see H1N1 is said to be available near Fountain Valley. But according to the list, it’s out of stock:

It would be nice if the map could also reflect the availability status. Plus, I wish there was a way to share a map tailored to a particular location. Even when you’re signed in to Google and using the My Maps feature, it doesn’t seem possible to save a map for a particular ZIP code. Using the share options also just shares the generic URL, not one that will bring up a location-specific map.

The locator will also soon be added the the Flu.gov site from the US government and the American Lung Association’s flu site.

Google also maintains a Google Flu Trends site designed to help you spot where flu activity may be peaking.