Google sees healthy opportunities.

Google Vice President Marissa Mayer gave a presentation focused on the search giant's plan to offer specialized search services related to health.

"Maybe you'll be able to carry all your medical information on a USB drive. Or you could travel the globe and know your medical records are just a few keystrokes away" in a personal online account, she said. Such an account might also keep track of your medical history so it would be easy to track when you're due for flu shots or a checkup.

Mayer gave no timetable as to when the services might be available. In a surprising aside, she mentioned part of the impetus for Google's interest in this area came from former Intel CEO Andy Grove. Grove contacted Google two years ago as Hurricane Katrina loomed to see if anything could be done to save the tons of paper-based medical records stored in basements that were soon to be flooded.

Mayer on Google and your health Source: James Duncan Davidson

"It was too late for us to mobilize in time, but it got us thinking that it doesn’t make sense to generate this volume of information on paper when it could be digitized with a lot of control for users," she said.

She discussed how it should be possible to help hospitals digitize X-Rays and give patients better access to and control of their medical records. She said it's estimated the 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. generate about seven terabytes of data every year. "We think we can add a lot of value" in helping sort all that out, Mayer said.

Poised for revolution?

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A new company run by Internet veterans also presented. RevolutionMoney is part of AOL founder Steve Case's Revolution network which has been focused on online health care. Revolution Money has audacious plans to upend what it says is the credit card monopoly with a Web 2.0-based model.

He said the $60 billion credit card industry is ripe for a disruptive technology. "The tax by monopolists Visa, MasterCard and American Express keeps going up," he said. "For every $100 consumer spends on credit card, $3 goes to this tax."

Revolution Money will charge half a percent for transactions using its card, but wave even that fee for online transactions. "It's PayPal meets Mastercard without the high fees," he said. Revolution's MoneyExchange card will only have the pin number on it, not a person's name or other personal information which Leonsis said will help cut back on fraud. Also, the card is designed to lighten the load of many wallet holders, combining the features of credit, ATM and prepaid charge cards in one. Users will be able to fund the card and make payments via the Web.

In addition to founder and CEO Jason Hogg, Revolution Money includes some big names on its board of directors include Case, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, former Charles Schwab chief executive David Pottruck and former Fannie Mae chief executive Franklin Raines. Leonsis said its received $50 million in funding and plans to distribute hundreds of thousands of cards in the next year.

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