MicroSoft’s HealthVault – Is it Applicable to, and will it work in, Australia?

There were huge headlines in the last week on MicroSoft’s new play in the e-Health space.

Typical coverage can be found at the following sites:

Microsoft plans medical-record service

By Ina Fried
http://www.news.com/Microsoft-plans-medical-record-service/2100-1011_3-6211575.html

Story last modified Thu Oct 04 07:13:52 PDT 2007

Microsoft is aiming to get consumers to store all of their health records online. It's a laudable goal, but one fraught with challenges.

On Thursday the company is outlining its vision, dubbed HealthVault, in which a person can view, from one place, their complete health records. Consumers will be able to view information from medical devices, myriad health care providers and insurance companies as well as share that information with health care providers of their choosing or search for information related to their health issues.

In conjunction with the health record effort, Microsoft is also launching HealthVault Search, a secure version of its health care search engine, drawn from its acquisition of Medstory.

It's a bold vision, but one that is probably years from reality. First of all, most consumers don't have electronic access to their health records today. As part of the new HealthVault service Microsoft is announcing, hospitals, insurance companies and others will be able to make such records available to consumers, though no major providers are committing to do so as part of HealthVault's initial launch.

…. (see the URL above for the complete story)

And also here:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/04/technology/msft.php

Microsoft rolls out online health records

By Steve Lohr

Published: October 4, 2007

NEW YORK:

Microsoft announced its drive into the consumer health care market Thursday, offering to store personal health records on the Web free while pursuing a partnership plan that borrowed from its successes in personal computer software.

The Microsoft service, called HealthVault, comes after two years spent building its team and technology. In recent months, Microsoft managers have met with many potential partners, including hospitals, disease-prevention organizations and health care companies.

The organizations that have signed up for HealthVault projects with Microsoft include the American Heart Association, LifeScan of Johnson & Johnson, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the Mayo Clinic and MedStar Health, a network of seven hospitals in the Baltimore-Washington region.

The partnerships are a page from Microsoft's old playbook. Persuading other companies to build upon its technology, and then helping them do it, was a major reason why Windows became the dominant personal computer operating system.

…. (see the URL above for the complete story)

From the descriptions offered so far it seems Microsoft is hoping to use a range of partners to capture clinical information from such sources as blood pressure checks, blood sugar readings, laboratory results and the like and allow the individual to add their comments, diagnoses etc to form a patient held record which was totally under the control of the individual as far as access was concerned.

Microsoft claim to have made the data-bases very secure and as the data is user-entered and only accessible under user control it would seem there are only security rather than privacy related issues – use of the whole record being totally voluntary.

The service is to be free as far as the user is concerned and to be supported by advertising – presumably targeted to the patient’s demographic and clinical information where this is known.

All in all I see this as a very interesting experiment in understanding what value people would place on having such a repository available.

For Australia one obvious issue is that the largest likely advertiser (the pharmaceutical industry) would not be able to undertake US style direct to consumer advertising – as it is illegal here – while not so in the USA. I am not sure how that would affect the business model or even if it would matter!

Also, it is likely there is less information available in Australia for automatic capture – so the value for the individual may not be as high.

Of course there is also the possibility that Medicare Australia could create a similar product – preloaded with a patient’s information as far as illnesses and medications were concerned. This may make the Microsoft offering less attractive here.

I will watch and wait with interest. At the end of the day it would be great if everyone had such a record to assist those who care for them when information is needed and the patient can’t remember or can’t say.

David.