Monday, February 9, 2009

Your Blood Sugars...Now Available Via Google

So I GOOGLE - a lot and I’ll admit it. I think it’s a fantastic search engine and it's helped me both personally & professionally. But I’m not really jazzed about that fact that my blood sugars could be available to any and all who Google if I chose to do so.

OK, let me backtrack. I was checking my Twitter on Friday (I’m still getting acclimated to figuring the “Land of Twit”out, but that's another story for another time) and ChronicBabe twitted the following:"Hey, sugar: Want Google to know your blood sugar? Mashable alerts us this morning that Google has l.. http://tinyurl.com/ak8ay3 "

OF COURSE...my interest was peaked. I clicked on her link and I suggest you do the same. For those of you who aren't familiar, Chronicbabe is a great site for any babe who suffers from a chronic illness. Chock full of info ( I never would have known about the whole Google/B.S thing) and funny to boot! Check it out!

I was interested and found the this "Chronic Bit" to be good and it linked to a Mashable article that went into greater detail. FYI-the Mashables dude didn’t have a great “working knowledge” of diabetes. You’ll see that as soon as you read his diabetes/donut example,(I kind of mentioned that in my comment - very nicely might I add) but he didn’t print it. Still, the article was interesting,to the point and explains how the Google Health Initiative much better than I do. Read it!

Basically, Google Health Initiative is now able to pull user information from all types of medical equipment, including blood sugar machines.

Personally – I’m not sure if I like the fact that if I allow, my numbers could be posted for all to see. I’m very concerned about privacy issues. Exactly who will be privy to my numbers and medical records? Would potential employers “Google” to see what my b.s averages were?

Don’t even get me started on insurance companies, would one of their lackies understand that exactly two days before my period (sorry boys) my blood sugars go high for no good reason, & that the day before my period I run low (like crazy low) all day? Or would they just punish me according to my numbers?

I have no problem writing about my blood sugars – all of us dBlogville have written about insane blood sugar days or achieving Blood Sugar Nirvana – but we choose to make that info public.

Then there’s the whole medical spam iss-ue. I already have more than enough “30-Day Diabetes Cure” emails in my spam box - would this Google feature add even more?

I have a lot of questions about this, and so far, not too many answers. I'm not really sold on this particular Google feature.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

1 comment:

Cara said...

To me, if I want you to know, I'll tell you. I don't want people googling my info unless I post it.
As for the weird period stuff, me too. I'm crazy high for a few days before and first two days are crazy low. Frustrating, but nothing can be done about it.