MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – Google Health has announced that it will endorse an industry-wide Declaration of Health Data, an initiative launched by HealthDataRights.org seeking rights for patients regarding their health data

The announcement was posted Tuesday on the company's blog by Roni Zeiger, MD, the product manager, and Missy Krasner, the product marketing manager.

"The Declaration aligns with the principles behind Google Health: consumer empowerment, privacy protection and data portability," they wrote. "We've joined a diverse group of stakeholders – including doctors, researchers, technology companies, writers, entrepreneurs, health economists and others – that have come together to support this effort to promote greater patient access to personal health data."

The Declaration of Health Data Rights reads as follows:

"In an era when technology allows personal health information to be more easily stored, updated, accessed and exchanged, the following rights should be self-evident and inalienable. We the people:

• Have the right to our own health data;
• Have the right to know the source of each health data element;
• Have the right to take possession of a complete copy of our individual health data, without delay, at minimal or no cost; If data exist in computable form, they must be made available in that form; and
• Have the right to share our health data with others as we see fit."

The declaration was drafted by Adam Bosworth, former Microsoft executive and head of Google Health; David C. Kibbe, director of the Center for Health Information Technology for the American Academy of Family Physicians; Alan Greene, MD, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of future health for A.D.A.M., Inc.; and others. 

"We hope the Declaration will help raise public awareness about the rights already protected under HIPAA and also help drive the public debate towards increasing patient access and control over their own health data. Strong health data rights will help patients collaborate with their doctors in order to get better care and avoid medical errors," Zeiger and Krasner wrote.