The health care industry is one of the last bastions of industry to fully adopt electronic record keeping. Despite the forceful drive toward universal EMR (electronic medical records), the paper chart still maintains a key presence at most hospitals nationwide. The VA (Veterans Administration) Medical Centers is an exception to this stereotype.
In general, the slow evolution is somewhat understandable, considering the monumental investment (i.e., money, time, and training) required to transition to a completely paperless environment. Even worse, each hospital network possesses its own unique computer system, hindering electronic inter-hospital patient data transfers (only HIPAA-compliant transactions, of course).
From the consumer side, although the hurdles to electronic records are less prominent, people generally apply a more chaotic less systematic approach to record keeping: discharge paperwork in a Manila folder; medication list on a Post-It note; and “allergies” in two or three brain cells.
With the web industry giants competing to be the de facto warehouse of your personal data, it was only a matter of time until they would enter the arena of medical records. Last year, Microsoft and Google publicly announced their intentions to provide online services to store your personal health information. Microsoft released HealthVault in Q4 2007, while Google is expected to release its own version sometime this year.
In related news from this week, the Mayo Clinic announced a collaboration with the Microsoft Corporation to advance the HealthVault platform. The details of this strategic alliance is yet unclear, but I believe both Mayo and Microsoft will greatly benefit from the synergy these powerhouses have to offer in their respective fields. The Mayo Clinic is a world-renowned research hospital and Microsoft is indubitably one of the most powerful software companies in the world.
On the Google front, Google Blogoscoped captures a brief glimpse of the upcoming Google Health’s login page. The blog also provides preliminary
screenshots from last August 2007. Although Google does not have the first-to-market advantage, it has demonstrated its undeniable prowess in dominating the web industry. Its ubiquitous search engine (Google.com), e-mail service (GMail), and video site (YouTube) are few examples of its success.
It will be interesting to see where this heated competition leads us. The benefits of maintaining health information in one convenient location are numerous. With patients’ permission, doctors can easily retrieve pertinent medical histories to guide diagnosis, management, and preventive health maintenance. Easily forgotten will be the days of faxing consent forms and awaiting return faxes of hospital/clinic records. Inversely, patients can benefit from streamlined access to their own health information. This would obviate the need to contact a hospital to request paper copies–sometimes with a nominal fee–of their own medical records.
Despite some obvious benefits, there are also potential drawbacks, such as privacy concerns about an oligarchy storing all your personal data. In any case, the true impact of HealthVault and similar services may not be appreciated until after they become mainstream products utilized by both the patient and provider. Although a bit slow to the party, I am pleased by how health care is progressively embracing technology and how technology has embraced health care.
