Kaiser Permanente and Microsoft Corp. are launching a pilot project to bring Microsoft's HealthVault platform together with Kaiser Permanente's personal health records for use by Kaiser employees and their doctors.
The partnership is expected to reveal new ways of caring for patients, said Jan Oldenburg, practice leader for the Internet services group at Kaiser, "We're absolutely excited about this," she said.
Kaiser Permanente has more than 2.2 million of its members actively using its personal health record called My Health Manager. Kaiser will now use Microsoft's HealthVault platform to expand the capabilities of My Health Manager and will begin by testing it first on its employees this summer. Next fall, Kaiser will evaluate the findings of the pilot and determine how it can be expanded for all Kaiser members, Oldenburg said.
Grad Conn, senior director of Microsoft's Global Consumer Health Strategy said the partnership will give patients an aspect of being able to control their own record and a way to always keep their health records in Microsoft's HealthVault.
"The more portability and the more control you give people over their records, the more they'll see it as valuable and the more they will invest more energy in using," Conn said. "This makes it very powerful and drives EHR adoption in a really compelling way."
The partnership will give Kaiser "a huge insight" into how people perceive PHRs and what they can do with the data, Oldenburg said.
Conn views the pilot as the beginning of a long journey to bring healthcare into the Internet age, with much still to be learned.
Kaiser launched HealthVault last October. Conn said Microsoft is measuring the success of HealthVault by the partnerships it draws. HealthVault is a platform that can be used with another company's PHR. Individual consumers cannot sign up to use HealthVault.
Patients who have access to a PHR using HealthVault can take advantage of the new tools Microsoft has for managing personal health and improving health outcomes, Conn said. "One of the things we see being very exciting is the way to get a granular understanding of [one's own] health biometrics. What you can measure, you can manage."
What do you think will be the tipping point in PHR adoption? Send your thoughts to Diana Manos, senior editor, at diana.manos@medtechpublishing.com.