Quintiles Invites Former Google Health Users to Join MediGuard.org

With the ringing in of the new year, patients and family members of the now bygone Google Health can still find a well established, online option for managing personal healthcare information in Quintiles’ MediGuard.org service.

Supported by global biopharmaceutical services provider, Quintiles, MediGuard.org has attracted more than 2.5 million patients since its inception in 2007 by providing free medication monitoring services, and is extending an open invitation to former Google Health users.

“We are extending an open invitation to all patients whose service with Google Health has ended,” said David Coman, senior vice president at Quintiles and head of its new Digital Patient Unit. “MediGuard is a free, easy-to-use service that is very effective in monitoring medications for patient safety. With that dedicated purpose, we’ve built a community on a scale that Google seemed to feel was not going to be possible for its health platform.”

Google Health was discontinued on January 1, 2012. When announcing the closure last June, Google explained that the service “didn’t scale as well as we had hoped.”

Coman added: “Google Health was a brilliant concept, but in order for online patient services to work, there must be a clear benefit to patients who enroll in them. MediGuard’s contribution is an easy-to-use service for patients to support a healthy lifestyle, many of whom are taking multiple medications for various conditions.”

According to Quintiles, its campaign to convert Google Health users is comprised of traditional non-paid media outlets, with a look toward using search engine optimization and search engine marketing as additional options.
Patients who register with MediGuard can store information about their own use of medicines, protected by a robust privacy policy and a secure platform. This allows the service to screen for possible dangerous drug interactions and safety alerts for the patient’s drugs while also providing feedback from fellow patients on side effects and other important information.