Google, IBM Team on Do-It-Yourself Medical Monitoring Tech
It's not "Star Trek" and Dr. "Bones" McCoy's tricorder sensor, but it is one step closer to where no medical patient has gone before; the ability to stream his or her vital signs from a health monitoring device to a computer, thanks to a partnership announced Thursday by IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) .
IBM's new software will work with Google Health, the search giant's free online medical record database announced last summer. Soon, a patient will be able to send data on heart rate, blood pressure, blood chemistry and other medical information from their homes or doctor's offices to their Google Health accounts.
Although no hardware manufacturers have signed on yet, IBM says its software will adopt to new standards set by the Continua Health Alliance, an industry group dedicated to interoperability among current and next-generation health-care devices.
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