Though they first demonstrated the biometric measurement and store capabilities of Google Health/IBM at the Connected for Health Summit last October, today they formally announced this capability.

Why the wait, not sure.  Maybe they were just waiting for Continua Alliance to announce, which they did on Monday (see Feb 3rd 2009 PR), that compliant devices were now entering the market.

Either way, what is interesting here is first the partnership with IBM (is there more behind the scenes in this partnership than just devices, is this IBM’s angle to enter the market without directly taking on Microsoft?).  Secondly, we may now have a viable competing solution to HealthVault as until today, they were the only major platform play that offered this type of capability.

Dossia, the third major platform play has also recently signed on to the Continua Alliance and are likely working on similar capabilities as Google announced today.