RSSMicrosoft to pilot a consumer health records management system
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published June 10, 2008, 6:20 PM
Just a few weeks after Google's release of its personal health care record tools, Microsoft has launched a pilot of its competing HealthVault platform, conducted with the help of the largest HMO in the US.
Announced this week at Microsoft's HealthVault conference, the new pilot will test the exchange of patient health data between My Health Manager, the existing electronic record program of Oakland-based HMO Kaiser Permanente, and HealthVault, a cloud-based, consumer-oriented health records system launched by Microsoft last October.
Microsoft's test will use the health records of Kaiser Permanente employees who also hold policies with the health insurance provider.
Last month's announcement of the availability of Google's health record tools followed a pilot by Google with more than 1,600 patients at the Cleveland Clinic. Patients volunteering for Google's test agreed to allow their health data to be integrated into Google's online health profiles.
In March of this year, Microsoft augmented its own HealthVault with the announcement of Amalga, a new family of third-party healthcare software covering clinical, operational, and financial applications.
Also at the HealthVault conference this week, a number of Microsoft healthcare partners unveiled specific third-party applications, including CapMed, Orbital Technologies, and Kryptiq, for instance.
In a Q&A session this spring, Steve Aylward, general manager for Microsoft's US Health and Life Sciences Group, focused on "familiarity" as a key strength for Microsoft versus Google and other rivals in the e-health records business.
"The familiarity of Microsoft technology can really help healthcare organizations and governments -- the largest healthcare providers in the world -- to increase their efficiency and accuracy, and thereby reduce errors in utilizing their existing technologies," Aylward said.
Despite the passage of HIPAA during the 1990s, the privacy of health care information remains a big issue these days among consumers and legislators. With its HealthVault platform, though, Microsoft is apparently well aware of people's concerns.
"In order for us to think about how does our brand extend to being a custodian of people's private health information, we really had to think through the privacy issues, the security issues, the trust issues, and what were the means by which we could be an effective custodian to do that," said Peter Neupert, corporate VP of Microsoft's Health Solutions Group, in a recent appearance at the Internet Caucus State of the Net Conference in Washington.
Other vendors working in the area of e-health records include IBM, Verizon, WebMD, and AOL founder Steve Case's Revolution.
In all seriousness, I work for a hospital and this stuff is going to blow up. My first baby is due in August and I will be plugging into HealthVault. He will have an entire lifetime of vaccine tracking and medical history at his fingertips.
This will revolutionize health care and is leaps and bounds from the binders of medical records and documents that make health care so difficult.
From a personal standpoint, the Google EPHR was just hideous. It looked like everything Google and just felt hard to read and decipher. HealthVault is a much cleaner interface.
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|And that is why you will need to ask 12 times for a recipe, or waiting hours for the medic to reach your clinic history: Doctor notebook will display: Are you sure do you want to read the history you already marked? (Yes) Are you sure nobody else is reading behind you? (Yes) Are you really sure? (Yes, damn it). Again, answer after turning 360 degrees around (OK OK OK OK OK OK). We are really sorry, please try again later (Ballmer asked to read it first)!
Google rules...
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|I get it you are trying to make a joke about UAC.
Except you fail, it prompts you only when you are making changes that could affect Windows. Ubuntu and many flavors of Linux do it as well.
Granted its better implemented in Linux as you can be full admin and not get prompted for the changes.
It asks you one time maybe two depending on what you are trying to do.
Keep trolling, though.
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|No trolling, just being sarcastic.
About UAC, it ask *before* you make any change, ie: there is no need about asking if you are sure you want to open the computer management console using an administrator account. If I am the computer administrator there is no need to annoy me, I KNOW what I am doing. Even a standard user already has some harmful options as read only (device manager, services, etc).
I heard recently in a MS conference that anything should require less than 3 mouse clicks to be useful, I really laughed, loud... Any change MS impose you more and more (useless) bureaucracy...
If you ever used Mac OS, you understand how UAC should work without constantly annoy the user. And it exist back from 10.3, years ago. MS seems to do bad quality photocopies from Apple. And before you suggest it, I am not an Apple fanboy. MacOS has some problems, but features are not designed to annoy but to help...
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|-quote- If I am the computer administrator there is no need to annoy me, I KNOW what I am doing. -/quote-
The problem that here is that many home users and even IT personnel sign in as administrator. Not all home users know what they are doing, but are signed in as the default administrator. They don't know that for good computer security they should sign in as a normal user and then elevate or use "run as" if they want to do something that requires admin rights. If you don't like UAC, turn it off or enable the "silent elevation" using GP.
(Even though I understand the need for UAC, and it is no where near annoying as it was in the initial beta, I still LOLed at your OP. Good one :-)
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|Whole new meaning to code blue! The blue screen of death! ... Just kidding. Microsoft has some great software. Security issues - no comment.
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|walter3000 tell me about it... i have Kaiser Permanente... now im ****ed
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|Microsoft...holding personal medical records?
If their security history with Windows and IE is the example, you can kiss your privacy GOODBYE!
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|...and not Google?
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|Sure, MSFTs record of leaking confidential data is really outrageous compared to governments, financial institutions and corporations... Hell and surely they are much worse than for example Google whose whole business model revolves around harvesting statistics about your personal info and re-sell it... All that said, looking at Facebook etc there seems to be zero public interest in privacy...
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