Google on Thursday unveiled its plan for a health care database that will give members of the public the option of storing and managing their medical records online and making them accessible to authorized health professionals.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced his firm's plan to leverage its online presence and enter the health care data management field at a conference in Orlando, Florida.

The move by Google is part of an ongoing effort involving government, the health care industry, and the high tech community to automate the mostly paper-based patient information system in the United States.

The movement has been slowed in part by special interests within the health care industry and consumer and regulatory concerns about the privacy of patient data.

"This is going to be a pretty big challenge for Google because of regulatory issues concerning patent information," said Charles King, principal analyst atPund-IT Research. "Google is going to have to convince health care providers and regulators that this service is safe and secure and will remain so."

In its announcement Google Health, the team managing the project, said the company will conduct its health service "with the same privacy, security, and integrity users have come to expect in all our services."

Consumers will have have complete control of their data and the company said it will not sell or share the users' data without specific permission from the consumer.

Google Health said it is working with third-party health care services to make it easier to import data that could possibly run the gamut from simple prescriptions to complex images.

"This is for the most part unstructured information. Every time I go to the doctor now my file keeps getting thicker and more complicated and diverse," Mr. King said.

According to Google, as people move around it becomes more difficult to track and organize all of their available medical data, so having online access to patients' health records makes that task easier.