Sept. 8, 2008 | By Barbara A. Cox and Marysol Imler Since 2004, the US has been energized in trying to develop and provide personal health records (PHR's) for all consumers. During the last 4 years, many models have emerged. Several of the models have failed for a variety of reasons, including lack of a sustainable funding model. In addition, many of the interoperable health record models have not included the involvement of the individual consumer -- the person for whom these models are intended to be used by.
Over the last year, a new type of solution provider entered the PHR market. Different than the typical vendor that has been known to service the health industry, these solution providers are vendors known for addressing the consumer market. The new entrants (Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and Revolution Health), may provide the type of competition and consumer controlled model that will help the industry evolve at a more rapid pace than what has been happening to date. With these new vendors, will control be transferred from the care provider to the consumer as it should be if health care is going to transform?
WINDS OF CHANGE
Are these products bringing about a refreshing change to the industry? While these products are much easier to use and implement than the traditional federated or scattered model of clinical data integration that has consumed the nation over the last 4 years, they appear to be in the first generation of product releases. Hopefully, the industry will see better things to come.
Microsoft, Google and Revolution Health are intended to support the consumerism wave in giving the individual a choice about the products they choose to use and the groups or people that can view their information. For an individual to receive full value for these products, they must have interoperability with that person's care providers' clinical systems. Unfortunately, the consumer is still limited by whether or not their own personal physician groups choose to participate with these products. Physicians and hospitals around the country are making choices on which platform to align with, and it is doubtful that an organization will choose to participate with multiple platforms.
Until the platforms achieve interoperability, a consumer will not truly have choice in the matter of determining which set of products they want to use. For instance, if your physician is associated with the Cleveland Clinic, you can receive the full value of having your data transferred into Google and populated with other services participating with Google, or you can choose to populate the data manually. Then, the individual is limited by the functionality provided by Google. Should you want to use a service that is associated with Microsoft HealthVault, you will be out of luck unless you choose to manually load the data yourself, which presents another set of challenges with providers regarding the accuracy of the data.
HOW ARE THE PHR PRODUCTS DIFFERENT?
Microsoft HealthVault is truly a platform. With this solution, business partners provide the application functionality. HealthVault is the keeper of the consumer demographics information and personal profiles to establish security and user identity. The consumer then chooses to use or buy services from a number of different vendors who provide value to the individual.
Google Health has a light-weight PHR embedded with its platform. The platform also has personal demographics and a personal profile for security and personal identity. While Google also has business partners in which an individual can choose to use, there is a limited supply of PHR solutions available.
Revolution Health is a robust PHR with a lot of educational content to add value for the individual. It is positioned as a tool to help employers and their employees. However, when conducting research, it was difficult to view the data integration possibilities with providers due to technical difficulties on the Web site.
CONSUMERS AND CHOICE
What will have to happen for consumers to have choice? The vendors and the care providers must evolve to support a consumer controlled environment. Consumers need to communicate to their care providers about the tools they want to use. The care providers will set up the link in their system and automatically send the clinical, administrative and financial data to the designated choice. For a seamless transmission of data to occur in a cost effective manner, the data transmission will need to follow strict standards that every vendor will adopt. Today's standards are left to the interpretation of the organizations interacting.
When the industry agrees to adopt a consumer control approach, then consumers will have choice. Until that time, the care providers are still in the driver seat, even with the new emerging consumer platforms that Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health and Revolution Health provide.
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Barbara A. Cox is Senior Principal, Noblis Center for Health Innovation. Marysol Imler is a Consultant for Noblis Center for Health Innovation.
