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Oct. 5: Microsoft on Thursday launched a secure Web site that allows users to
store and to share their personal health records at no cost, the
AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The Web site, called HealthVault,
allows users to store their medical histories, records of immunizations, and
information about glucose and cholesterol levels.
Users can download medical information, such as laboratory results or X-rays,
from the Web sites of their health care providers or data from digital
devices such as glucometers and store the data on HealthVault (Rampell,. In addition, HealthVault
allows users to provide access to parts of their PHRs
to physicians, family members and others through e-mail invitations.
Users also can send parts of their PHRs to
partnered applications on other Web sites, such as an application on the
American Heart Association site that analyzes information on blood pressure
levels. Microsoft plans to support HealthVault
through revenue from advertisements from a health information search engine
linked with the Web site.
Microsoft, which has sought to convince members of the health care industry
to develop applications on their Web sites and devices that work with HealthVault, said that more than 40 organizations have
agreed to participate.
Peter Neupert, a vice president for the Health
Solutions Group at Microsoft, said, "The value of what we're doing will
go up rapidly as we get more partners".
Privacy Concerns
Privacy advocates and consumers raised concerns that storage of PHRs on HealthVault could
expose the information to hackers and others, but Microsoft officials said
that the company has worked with experts over the past several years to
ensure the security of the Web site.
Steve Shihadeh, general manager for the Health
Solutions Group at Microsoft, said, "It's the patient's data, and no one
else can see it". In addition, he said, "We won't mine for data. We
won't sell their data," adding, "I think we're really raising the
bar awfully high for privacy. All the data is secured in one place in a
locked-down data center with the best security capabilities available".
Deborah Peel founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, which helped
develop HealthVault said that the
"revolutionary thing about HealthVault is that
it gives consumers complete control over their records and guarantees no one
can access that information without their consent". "Microsoft is
setting an industry standard for privacy," Peel said.
Gates Opinion Piece
"We live in an era that has seen our knowledge of medical science and
treatment expand at a speed that is without precedent in human history,"
but, "for all the progress we've made, our system for delivering medical
care is clearly in crisis," Microsoft Chair Bill Gates writes in a Journal
opinion piece. "At the heart of the problem is the fragmented nature of
the way health information is created and collected," Gates writes.
He writes that "increased digitization of health care information alone
will not solve the problems we face," adding, "What we need is to
place people at the very center of the health care system and put them in
control of all of their health information." According to Gates, an
"Internet-based health care network," such as HealthVault,
"will undoubtedly improve the quality of medical care and lower costs by
encouraging the use of evidence-based medicine, reducing medical errors and
eliminating redundant medical tests."
Use of such technology "can make us all agents for change, capable of
pushing for the one thing we all really care about: a medical system that
focuses on our lifelong health and prioritizes prevention as much as it does
treatment," he writes. Gates concludes that such technology "can be
a powerful catalyst for change, here in the U.S. and in countries around the globe where access to medical
professionals is limited and where better availability of health care
information could help improve the lives of millions of people".
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