Google Health launching soon?

Trust the reliable folks over at Google Blogoscoped to unearth a login page for the long-awaited Google Health service before it actually launches. Neither the login nor any of the links on the page seem to work, but it’s another tantalizing glimpse at what Google may soon be unveiling.

It’s worth noting that Marissa Mayer, who took over the Google Health project after Adam Bosworth unceremoniously decamped to launch his own health-related startup, said last October that Google Health would be coming in early 2008. So the timing is certainly about right.

As for clues — well, the login page doesn’t offer too many. The blurb to the left of the screen (see screenshot below) promises online health profiles, the ability to download medical information from doctors and hospitals, personalized health advice, some sort of physician directory, connections to “time-saving services” and a sharing system so your family and caregivers have access to your medical information.

Microsoft’s HealthVault (see our coverage here and here) promised much the same thing — minus the doctor directory and personalized advice, at least — but initially was so bogged down in heavy-handed security and user-unfriendliness that I’ve heard scarcely a word about it since. (Plus, there are those nagging privacy questions.) Scads of Health 2.0 sites also offer various pieces of what Google appears to be promising, although to the best of my knowledge, no one has really put all these features together before.

Anyway, it will be fascinating to see how Google approaches many of the same issues that have bedeviled Microsoft and the many startups trying to slice off a piece of the Health 2.0 pie. With any luck, we won’t be waiting much longer. (Hat tip to bbgm, where Deepak Singh rightly wonders what personalized health guidance and “time-saving services” might actually mean.)

See also our previous coverage of a Google Health prototype (or so I assume), also featured on Blogoscoped, here.