It's pretty simple. There was not and will not be a market for Personal Health Records. Google Health was designed to be a store of PHRs where users had significant ownership over their health records, and they would allocate access to service providers.
That's not how health records work in the US where Google tried to start the product. HRs are effectively owned by the companies that provide health care, while patients have access to the records. There is a multibillion industry dedicated to keeping things that way (Cerner, Epic, the hospitals themselves) and even with Google's ostensible ability to change the world (at that time), they would never have been able to build a product that sustained itself because there wasn't a market for the product.
In short Google tried to compete with EPIC and Cerner without a market for their alternative product.
Individuals in the US (present company excepted) aren't interested in owning and managing their own health records; they want their HRs to be managed conveniently for them.
Today, Google (and AWS and Azure) makes deals with EPIC and the Hospitals (to host infra in their cloud) and also makes research deals (to help build their health research projects). This is a much more realistic approach given the constraints.
That's not how health records work in the US where Google tried to start the product. HRs are effectively owned by the companies that provide health care, while patients have access to the records. There is a multibillion industry dedicated to keeping things that way (Cerner, Epic, the hospitals themselves) and even with Google's ostensible ability to change the world (at that time), they would never have been able to build a product that sustained itself because there wasn't a market for the product.
In short Google tried to compete with EPIC and Cerner without a market for their alternative product.
Individuals in the US (present company excepted) aren't interested in owning and managing their own health records; they want their HRs to be managed conveniently for them.
Today, Google (and AWS and Azure) makes deals with EPIC and the Hospitals (to host infra in their cloud) and also makes research deals (to help build their health research projects). This is a much more realistic approach given the constraints.