[Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer/via Cleveland.com]

Jeff Romanoff of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania was given a lifeline from a fellow Stormtooper.   Romanoff, 41, has genetic disease Von Hippel-Lindau which caused him to lose his right kidney to tumors and his left kidney was failing.  When a group of Star Wars costuming groups found out that Romanoff needed a kidney, they immediately started checking to see if they were a match.

Eric Seeman (TK 4619 of Garrison Empire City of the 501st Legion) found out that he was a perfect match for Romanoff (TK 076 of Garrison Carida in Philadelphia).  Surgical Director Dr. David Goldfarb of the Cleveland Clinic was in charge of the transplant.  The surgery was performed on April 3, took 8 hours, and Romanoff left the hospital cancer-free.

Seeman said that the months of testing was well worth it because he knew he made a difference the day he found out Romanoff’s visible cancer was removed.  The 501st Legion helped pay for Seeman’s travel from Philadelphia to Cleveland Clinic.

The 501st Legion promotes the Star Wars movie and give back to the community.  Romanoff himself joined in 1999 when he first put on a Stormtrooper costume.   Seeman joined in 2007 when Romanoff’s garrison was in New York City raising money for Albin Johnson, the daughter of the 501st Legion’s founder.

“He saved my life,” stated Romanoff in regards to Seemann. “I’m completely cancer-free and I have a brand new kidney. There aren’t many words that can describe what he’s done for me.”

The picture above is Romanoff giving Darth Vader (played by Mark Gau) a big hug.

Microsoft Corporation and Mayo Clinic have partnered on a new website that focuses on storing personal medical and health information.  The Mayo Clinic Health Manager website is powered by Microsoft HealthVault.  By storing medical records on the Health Manager website, clients are able to transfer their data to new clinics or hospital specialists.

Some of the data that can be stored includes medical history, hospital visits, and heart rate monitors.  Anyone is allowed to sign up for an account and not just Mayo patients.  When signing up for the service, the website will ask several questions and make recommendations based on that information.

While many people advocate using services like these as it may be more secure than paper files and reduces medical errors, others have been against the service due to privacy.  Deven McGraw, Director of the healthy privacy project of the Center for Democracy and Technology stated that Health Manager is not covered by national laws that specify that health care systems can access and share information without consent.

Google launched a similar partnership with the Cleveland Clinic last year.

[via Associated Press]

Medical records are tedious to keep organized when everything is all on paperwork.  Questions sometimes come up such as when is the last time you filled a prescription, when was your last physical, when was your last check-up, etc.  Google has come up with a way to keep all of that information organized and it’s called Google Health.

Below is a screen shot of the navigation of the site and the user interface:

When adding a list of medications being taken, information is placed within the Drug Interactions feature.  Users are asked to fill out profile details such as Age/sex/height, Conditions, Medications, Allergies, Procedures, Test results, and Immunizations.  The Add To This Profile feature has a full list of condition and symptom types that can added to your profile.

Medical records can be imported from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic MyChart, Longs Drug Stores, Medco, MinuteClinic from CVS Caremark, Quest Diagnostics, RxAmerica, and Walgreens Pharmacy.  Google plans to continuously add more clinics to the list.

The Explore health services feature allows the user to voluntarily make health information public to several clinics, who will then have permission to send your information around your profile.  Some of these clinics include ePillBox.info, American Heart Association Heart Attack Risk Calculator, HxTI VaccineView, LIVESTRONG.COM Health Center, Lifestar, MediConnect Global, MyDailyApple, MyMedicalRecords.com, MyMedicalSummary, NoMoreClipboard, and yourHealthâ„¢ by UNIVALâ„¢.

Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience at Google announced the launch on the Google Blog.

Competitors include:
1.) Microsoft’s HealthVault
2.) RevolutionHealth
3.) MedBillManager

Google has partnered up with the Cleveland Clinic to enable some of its patients to store their medical history online. The pilot program is most likely a Google Health initiative. Google hinted at launching Google Health roughly 18 months ago. Through the program, Google wants to enable the free flow of medical records between medical institutions.

If you have ever been to multiple doctors, you know how long it can take for medical files to be sent from one doctor to another. Surprisingly enough, a very small percentage of health records are electronic. Most health records are hand-written and placed in vanilla envelopes. When a doctor requests a patient’s records, someone has to find the records, photocopy them, and send them out via snail mail or fax.

Google’s pilot program at the Cleveland Clinic will allow some of its patients to electronically share their medical records with ease. The patients will (supposedly) have control over who can see their records. The health records will be stored in a secured health profile area on Google. Google hopes that the pilot program’s users will see a benefit in sharing  their health records with insurance providers, physicians, pharmacists, and hospitals electronically.

Google is not the first major player trying to cash in on online medical record storage. Microsoft’s HealthVault lets users store and share information about their health online as well.

Although I think the free flow of medical records is an excellent idea, security and privacy could be a huge concern. We may be trusting Google with too much information.

You may remember Stephen Case from the Internet Service Providers he built from the ground up, America Online.  Now he is pursuing a new venture: getting health care information online.  This coming week, Case will be formally introducing RevolutionHealth.com.

Partnerships with Harvard Health Publications, MayoClinic.com, Cleveland Clinic, and Prevention Magazine have already been set-up.  Carly Fiorina, former President and CEO of Hewlett-Packard and Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State are also involved with the project.

“There is a big opportunity to create the most trusted brand in health,” stated Stephen Case in a phone interview by the New York Times.

RevolutionHealth had 486K visitors in March and aims to provide users the ability to create custom pages in order to compete with websites like WebMD.com.  Private investors funded Case with $500 million to get RevolutionHealth off the ground.  This funding was provided by former CEOs including Carly Fiorina, Franklin Raines (former CEO of Fannie Mae), and Stephen Wiggins (founder/former CEO of Oxford Health Plans).

Case expects to create brand awareness within 5 years.  “We can afford to take the time to build the brand and build the trust” stated Case.