Health information technology is the method of electronically storing health-related information files and records into a database. Transmitting medical records is faster and more effective by using such technology.

What is Google Health?

Google Health is new health information technology that provides an easy way to gather, store, manage, and share medical records and health information. Google Health is a database of online personal health records.

Benefits to the User:

When you place your medical history in Google Health, it gets updated. One of the greatest advantages to this is that physicians can access your previous medical history; this allows physicians to better diagnose you. You have access to your own health information with Google Health.

Below are some things Google Health allows its users to do:

• Build online health profiles
• Import medical records from physicians and pharmacies
• Learn about health issues
• Find helpful resources, search for physicians and hospitals
• Connect to online tools and services

You can then enter basic personal information and detailed information about health conditions, medications, lab results, surgeries/procedures, allergies, and more. Users with Google accounts can share information with others and stop sharing at any given time. The ability to link to a number of personal health services such as comparisons of medications and importing lab results is another great feature of Google Health.

Personal health record services are moving in the direction of electronic information technology. Google Health users can link to tools such as the Anvita Health Drug Comparison Tool; this tool offers a personal comparison of medications. Some services, when enabled, are able to access and update health records automatically.

Google Health allows you to import your health records into your Google Health account from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies that are connected. You can also keep up with your weight, blood pressure, and other wellness metrics and track goals for those metrics.

Google Health allows you to store as much or as little health information as you wish. It has an online dashboard that you can use to track all your health-related information and goals. Using Google Health allows you to consolidate your medical information and health and wellness information into one convenient storage location. There is a search box at the top of every page in Google Health named “Search the Web.” Entering data into that query box takes you to external aggregated sources.

Confidentiality and Security of Your Health-Related Information

Your medical records are kept confidential through Google Health due to its privacy policy. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; it updates Health Information Portability and Accountability Act security provisions to include Google Health. Google Health users must be notified if confidentiality of their personal data is compromised. Your health information belongs to you; Google Health uses encryption and other security techniques to keep your health information confidential.

Related Costs or Required Accounts

The application to use Google Health is free, but you must have a Google account. Google Health is also free to doctor’s offices, hospitals, retail pharmacies, and other providers.

Be in charge of your health-related information, monitor goals, and have access to your information by using Google Health.

Dylan Marsh is Social Media Manager at Carrington College, a recognized medical billing and coding school, where he focuses on interacting with college students via Carrington Colleges Groups social website properties.

Calorie counting and tracking workout intensity through software can often be a bit of chore. FitRabbit is a mobile app (currently only supported for the iPhone) that puts a twist on traditional diet and fitness software by turning your fitness goals into a fun, social game.

Through the app, you can win prizes for healthy activities and share your meals and workouts with your friends. Since it’s mobile (as opposed to being a web or desktop app), it makes it pretty easy to track what you’re doing. It pulls calorie information from the USDA (through an API called FatSecret) and has a heartrate monitor. And finally, the app was created by me, a normal programmer chick who’s just trying to stay fit

Fitness (and everything else, for that matter) is becoming increasingly social with the rise of Facebook, Twitter and now Google+. For me personally, there is nothing more inspirational to me than knowing that Julie and Steph buy delicious and healthy fruit from the Farmers’ Market. Or knowing that Chris lifts weights at the gym almost every day and then has a home cooked meal of salad and chicken cordon bleu. Through FitRabbit, I can see what healthy activities my friends are up to (if they choose to share that info with me.)

The app spices things up a little bit by turning the achievement of your health and fitness goals into a game. The Garden and Moo Prizes, for example, go to users who eat fruits and vegetables four times a week or drink enough milk. The Body Builder Prize (winning requires working out 5 days a week) can give users the incentive to get in that last workout at the end of the week. The capstone FitRabbit Prize can only be won by users who work out frequently, eat enough fruits and veggies, and avoid sugar.

The app tries to strike a balance between being advanced and, at the same time, fun and accessible to ordinary people, who are too busy to track every little thing or pore over multiple graphs and reams of data. Activity entry is pretty easy through FitRabbit. The user can snap photos of their meals and then do the calorie lookup later. I use the app while I’m on the elliptical. With a few taps and zero typing, I am able to track my heartrate while I’m working out. The apps aims to be useful, without being distracting.

I hope others will find this app as helpful as I have. Check it out and write a review! Or contact me at help@fitrabbitapp.com. I am constantly iterating on the app, and I would love to hear your feedback! Thanks!

Did you know you can lose weight and become healthier with Twitter? Here are a few coolest Twitter tools and bots that help and motivate you to maintain a healthier life style!

You don’t need to be a geek actually but if you don’t have a Twitter account yet, that’s a good reason to register one (even f you are tired of that Twitter talk around the Internet).

Office Workout is a cool (surprisingly not really popular) Twitter bot that keeps you fit and healthy at work by tweeting a random office workout every 30 minutes.

Just follow it via your favorite Twitter client and let it update you twice n hour!

I find it awesome that the tool reminds you to keep a few seconds of rest and do some exercises.

Qwitter is a Twitter support group that helps you quit smoking! Tweet how many cigarettes you smoke daily, track your progress and share it with your Twitter friends who will be motivating you! Each time you light up, send Qwitter the number of cigarettes you just smoked by sending a public reply to @iquit.

TweetWhatYouEat provides a public food journal and thus encourages your followers to motivate you to maintain healthy diet. “Tweetwhatyoueat uses Twitter to allow you track your food intake, calories and weight from just about any device including your mobile phone, IM or the web!” You can also export your Twitter diary from the web interface.

RememberTheMilk is a Twitter client for the web-based productivity tool that allows you to organize your daily tasks. It can be also an awesome way to organize your workouts.

Just send its Twitter bot a direct message with the task and (optionally) when it’s due. The task will be added to your inbox, and the tool will remind you about it later.

Twackit allows to use your Twitter account to track any metric (like your weight!) and observe trends over time.

Just tweet a numeric value and hashtag to @twackit: no need to sign up, and totally free!

All you need i to pick meaningful hashtags to categorize your twacks.

If you want to keep your weight private, use w8track to track your weight. To record your weight, send a direct message on Twitter to DM w8track. once you’ve specified a unit of measure, it’ll become the default. You’ll only need to specify pounds, kilograms, or stones the first time you enter your weight. The next time you enter your weight, you can simply send the number

gtFtr is a handy tool that allows to track your specific exercises and daily statistics.

Just send @gtFtr a Tweet with exercise details (e.g. “Steps 900“), the number of calories (“Cals 800“), distance (“Dist 3.9“), etc.

This can be a good and quick way to maintain online journal you can access from home or your workplace. Besides, it’s public, so you can get your followers to motivate you!

Ugomo allows to keep track of your workouts by Tweeting them.

Let’s say you do various exercises during the week and you want to keep track of which ones take more time. In this case, the tool may turn very useful!

Simply send a twitter message with hashtags (for example, #run, #walk, #swim) addressing them to @ugomo and get charts, calendar, summaries, reports etc.

Tweet A Run is a Twitter based app (you’ll need to connect it to your Twitter account) that enables you to monitor of running progress by Tweeting it! Just go to the app, login with your Twitter account info and record your rub: distance and time. Repeat after each time and create your graph!

Happy Twittering and getting healthier!