Electronic medical...everything?

I don't think the average person gave the idea of electronic medical records much thought in the pre-Obama age. But we've heard a lot about digitizing the results of our pap smears lately, thanks to the big chunk of stimulus-money change (like $17-19 billion big) the president set aside for such a transition.

Now I'm not getting into the debate about whether electronic medical records on a hospital/clinic - or national - level are good, bad, or, as far as I'm concerned, a combination of both.

But while this stuff's on people's minds, we've watched personal systems for managing medical information electronically pop up everywhere - like the biggie, Google Health.

I'm all for taking control of one's health, and I think with the current state of the healthcare system, it's a necessity. So naturally, I was intrigued by the prospect of airing all of my medical laundry on Google (well, for a doctor who may need it someday).

But when I started poking around, I saw some pretty fatal (for me) flaws. It's a lot of work to get everything in there! Some info gets pulled in automatically but can, apparently, be wrong. Very wrong. And, most importantly, most hospitals and clinics don't even use electronic medical records - only 9 percent - so the daydreaming of seamlessly sharing information with my doctor was more or less shattered.

I do see the potential for this, though. I just think we have a long way to go before I'll be entering the results of my annual TB skin tests into Google.

Has anyone out there tried Google Health or other online health information management services? What do you think?