I’m a huge fan of Google. I forward all email into gmail, I use picasa for all my photo albums, I search with google, I’ve been investigating their Android mobile phone platform, I frequent their code repository, and the list goes on.

I find this latest Google endeavor a bit troubling. Google began piloting their newest medical records program yesterday with a clinic in Cleveland Ohio (as many as 10,000 patients).

I have to admit, there have been times when it would’ve been convenient to have access to my medical information, but I can’t get my mind around the fact that storage is up in the “cloud”, accessible from wherever.

The clinic in Cleveland Ohio currently has medical records in a digital data bank that offers their patients the ability to look at them online, so it’s not a huge change (unlike a lot of other hospitals).

The World Privacy Forum has voiced its opinion, saying that their concern lies in the fact that past identity theft has been an issue, and a company like Google who already has a huge amount of “other” data could just add to the problem.

There is a potential for some nasty new exploits. It’ll be interesting to see how well this pilot goes. I wish Google all the best.