November 11th, 2008
How your Personal Health Record might save your life
Here at ZDNet Healthcare I get a lot of criticism whenever I mention the idea of a personal health record (PHR). (Picture from Intel.)
A PHR, which you can download for your own use or allow a doctor to see, is the most personal information you have. As we saw here yesterday, its very existance creates new risks.
So why do it? In separate announcements yesterday Intel and the Cleveland Clinic tried to offer answers.
Intel’s offerings, which we featured in August, are now ready for market. They consist of laptops, measurement devices, and an interface for doctors which aim to let patients monitor their own conditions and populate their own PHRs.
Despite all the patient empowerment talk doctors are still a big element in the sale, so the initial roll-out is to pilot programs run by insurers like Aetna, retirement operators like Erickson, and medical groups like Providence Medical in Oregon.
What the selection shows is that it’s still uncertain what the best route to market is here. Should it be a lifestyle amenity, should it come from the hospital, or is it designed to help insurers control costs?
The Cleveland Clinic, of course, is more certain all this should come from the hospital, which is one reason they have partnered with Microsoft HealthVault.
Microsoft’s strategy seems to be to sell its Amalga hospital computing system, then extend the sale through HealthVault applications.
In this case you’re using existing home devices. Your current PC. Your current blood pressure monitor. Your current sugar monitor. Take the readings, then enter them through the PC to HealthVault, which can share those records with the Clinic at your command.
Notice that the patient’s out-of-pocket expenses here are zero, assuming they already have the necessary kit, and if you’re an insured patient with a chronic condition you most certainly do although, in the pilot program Microsoft is supplying devices.
The pay-off lies in closer monitoring of readings by both patients and doctors, staving off expensive emergencies like a trip to the ER in an ambulance. The Clinic can compare results of those using the program against those not using it within its population.
You can look at both these efforts as very public medical trials, just like the JUPITER study we reported on the other day. Hard evidence is need to prove that PHRs work at extending life and lowering costs.
The process of getting that information has now begun in earnest.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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