Google's Chrome OS may heat up PHR competition with Microsoft

As pretty much anyone with a pulse and a PC knows these days, Google made major headlines recently when it announced that it was introducing a Chrome-based PC operating system. While nobody expects the Chrome OS to eat Microsoft's lunch, it does represent a shift toward computing "in the cloud" rather than being tied to the desktop.

This shift can do nothing but good for Google's race to capture healthcare mindshare. If nothing else, it offers a clear point of differentiation between its Google Health PHR--which will doubtless end up with intricate linkages to the Chrome OS--and the old-school enterprise computing underpinnings to the HealthVault program. If Chrome OS gains any significant mindshare, I do believe we'll have more of a horse race going between the two for dominance of the personal health record space.

Of course, both sides have a distinct value proposition that can't be eliminated by trotting out new technology. Google, as familiar as the family toaster to most connected households, reaches into people's daily lives on a level that won't be eclipsed one bit by the introduction of Microsoft's Bing search engine. And no matter how smart the engineers at Google are, they're not going to become a powerhouse enterprise software player that looks like an obvious choice to help companies manage consumer health data.

Still, depending on how the Google OS is perceived, and whether health data sharing standardizes on a cloud computing model or more traditional client-server technology, things could begin to even out a bit between the two super-powers. If health data management ends up being decentralized, it's anyone's guess as to whether Microsoft or Google is the best choice as a partner.

I don't pretend to have any kind of crystal ball here. But I do think it's hard to argue that the PHR world is a lot more interesting with the Chrome OS in it. - Anne