It looks like Google and IBM will team up in order to help get personal health data online, as the companies told the media on Thursday that people who use Google Health can now automatically stream data from medical devices into their personal health records. This new feature will use software developed by IBM in collaboration with Continua Health Alliance, an organization that supports interoperable health care technology products.

Furthermore, this initiative was supported by Eclipse and Open Health Tools, two open-source communities dedicated to supporting advancements in health care. The new features will now allow patients to exchange their personal data health with doctors or other authorized parties. This way, everyone can look out for their relatives, by receiving constant data about their health wherever they are.

Even if hundreds of PHR programs currently exist, many of them specific to individual hospitals, security concerns remain one of the biggest deterrents to wider adoption of PHRs and digital health records in general, as electronic personal health records are not classified as related documents under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Of course, many think such applications are groundbreaking, but they only highlight the need to make sure the devices and streams are protected and trustworthy, as people need to have confidence in the information traveling through these new systems. It they will not, than they won’t use them and the benefits will all be for naught. It remains to be seen if the system introduced by IBM and Google will have the desired success among both patients and doctors.