Third-party Services Overview

What is Google Health?

Google Health is a new product that offers users a simple and easy way to collect, store, manage and share their medical records and health information.

Google Health lets users:

• Build online health profiles
• Import medical records from doctors and pharmacies
• Learn about health issues and find helpful resources
• Search for doctors and hospitals
• Connect to online tools and services

What kinds of third party services is Google Health looking for?

The service must offer personalized functionality to the user based on the data in the user's Google Health profile. Currently, a Google Health profile can contain the following types of data: conditions, medications, allergies, test results, procedures, immunizations, gender, and age. At this time, Google Health does not support nutrition and exercise information, and it also does not support images such as x-rays. Therefore, a service that only stored scanned images of health documents would not be a good fit at this time (we look forward to when it will be!).

Google Health Services Application (request to be listed in the Service Directory)

What are some examples of personalized services?

Examples of personalized services include:

1. A clinical trial matching service that reads a Google Health profile and informs the user what relevant clinical trials s/he might be eligible for.
2. A medical device that contributes personal health data to a Google Health profile and that data can be expressed as a lab test.
3. A service that reads a Google Health profile and provides customized news alerts based on the contents of that profile. Sending news alerts that simply contain non-personalized drug-related information, for example, is not considered customized. However, sending news alerts to the user based on any condition or medication found in his/her profile would be considered customized.

The threshold for services that provide relevant content is more difficult to define. We would gladly welcome content providers that provide meaningfully, personalized content. For example, if MedicationsXYZ.com (fictitious website) provided an article for each medication in a user's profile, we would consider the site to offer a meaningfully personalized service only if the user could view a page that listed the medications in the user's profile and relevant articles to those medications. A meaningful integration involves more than just triggering a search based on one of the user's medications.

How will third-party services work with Google Health?

1. User logs into Google Health with a Google Account.

   

2. User is directed to the Google Health home page.

   

3. User selects which services he or she would like to have in their Google Health profile.

   

   If the user were to click on the logo, s/he would see more detailed information about your service.

   

4. The user will then be taken to the site of the third-party service. The third-party service must support user accounts.

   

5. Users must grant third-party service permission.

   

6. After granting approval, users can then access third-party services from their Google Health home page. Each service can specify up to three "action links" which will display on the user's Google health home page once they have linked with your service.

   

In what ways can a service interact with the user through Google Health?

In addition to action links described above, services can also send notices, which are one-way messages from services to users. Notices can contain free-form text (which may be XHTML formatted) and/or structured data in CCR format. If the notice contains structured data, the data will be automatically added to the user's Google Health profile.

What are the financial arrangements from being listed as a service with Google Health?

Google Health does not charge companies who develop and offer third-party services to be listed in the Google Health Services Directory, nor does Google Health have any financial arrangement with companies who offer services, such as paying them to participate. If a company who offers a service would like to charge users for the customized service, it is permitted but it would be the service's responsibility to handle payment methods and also to inform the user in the description on the directory that fees apply.

If I am interested in providing a service to Google Health users, what do I need to do?

• If you would like feedback on whether your service would be a good candidate, fill out the services inquiry form.
• Review and agree to the Google Health Third-Party Developer Policies.
• After you have agreed to the Google Health Developer Online Terms of Service, you will be granted access to the development sandbox (known as H9). Real user data should not be stored in the sandbox.
• You can start development in the H9 Developer Sandbox right away.
• Complete all the steps listed in the Getting Started Guide.
• After all the steps are completed, fill out the Google Health Services Application. Prior to your application being reviewed, please ensure that your application works with AuthSub's secure parameter set to 1 (which is required on the production site).
• If approval is granted, your application will be given access to the production site, https://www.google.com/health.

How do I submit an application?

When you have fully tested the integration and are ready for review, please complete the Google Health Services Application.

Note: All character counts include spaces: "this is short" counts as 13 characters, not 11.

• Application name: Up to 30 characters
• Target URL for when users click on "Link to profile" for your service
• The domain that will issue the token request (the domain that you register with Google & Google Health)
• Short description (Services Directory): Up to 200 characters
• Privacy Policy link
• Smaller Logo (Services Directory Page): 120x60 pixels
• Long Description (Services Detail Page): Up to 500 chars
• Larger Logo: 280x120 pixels
• Service Action Links, each one should have:
  • a clear call to action, each link with text up to 30 characters
  • a target URL
• Two test accounts on your system (especially if your service requires fees)
• Please make sure that you have registered your X.509 certificate and are able to sign requests with secure=1 AuthSub tokens.
• Please allow users to revoke their Google Health tokens from your site

After my service is "certified", can I issue a press release about the integration?

Per the terms of the Google Health Developer Online Terms of Service you would need approval from Google to issue a press release about a Google Health integration. Due to the anticipated volume of requests, we will not be able to accommodate most requests. Therefore, do not plan on drafting or issuing a press release. No press releases that include the Google brand name or legally allowed unless Google specifically grants you permission to use the name and approves the release in writing.

After my service is "certified", can I put the Google Health logo on my website?

Upon successful completion of the application process, you should receive a Google Health logo that can be placed on select pages of your site. All pages that have the Google Health logo must be directly related to the Google Health integration. For example, a natural place for the logo is on the landing page that the users see after deciding to link their profiles with your service.

What can I say about Google Health on my website?

There will be a standard description of Google Health that you can use to describe the service, in addition to what your integration offers. This will also be sent to you in addition to the logo.

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