Kaiser and Microsoft Head Online Together
Microsoft and Kaiser Permanente are partnering to improve the exchange of patient information online, the WSJ reports.
In a pilot program, the giants of software and health care will tackle the transfer of Kaiser employees’ data between Kaiser’s personal health record — an online repository containing test results, prescriptions and immunizations — and Microsoft’s HealthVault, a Web-based service that allows patients to store, manage and share medical on the Web.
If all goes well during the test, expected to run through the fall, the service would be expanded to interested Kaiser patients.
Similar efforts to put personal medical records online are underway at companies such as Revolution Health and Google, which launched its online health-care service, Google Health earlier this year. But people have been slow to embrace the approach, the WSJ writes, in part because of privacy and security concerns.
Another big problem is the that only 14% of medical practices keep records electronically, the WSJ noted earlier this year.
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Microsoft and Google are taking the lead by inventing the medical web, leveraging existing technologies to create an online infrastructure where all stake holders in the healthcare continuum can come together. They’re doing what the government cannot. It will take years to establish the level of trust and security the general public will require before they are willing to maintain their medical records online and new incentives must be developed that encourage people to take control of managing their healthcare. It will take equally long, and also require new incentives, for providers to fully embrace the use of technology and patient communications in their practices. These are the market forces that will help evolve healthcare with or without government mandates. It’s a welcome development for anyone interested in empowering the patient and squeezing waste out of our healthcare system.
Microsoft and Google were initially marketing their online PHR sites to individual people, in what would be an exceedingly long and excruciating process to populate their web sites with significant content that would be of any use to physicians and hospitals. Microsoft now seems to realize that partnering with owners of medical records is a short cut to achieving success and leapfrogging Google Health. However, Microsoft may possibly be teaming up with the wrong partner, with regard to Kaiser, according to this article: http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/kaiser-finishes-major-phase-of-costly-emr-project/2008-05-12
What Microsoft and Google should do is market their services to individual physicians and medical groups that own and maintain millions of medical records for the vast majority of people in the USA. Doctors are eager to surrender their EMR purchase and maintenance costs to a major partner like Google or Microsoft. Read our survey on this subject for more insight on doctors’ EMR thoughts and plans — http://whatdoctorsthink.com/cgi-bin/comments.cgi?EMR-results.
Robert Cykiert, M.D.
President,
WhatDoctorsThink.com
Having used Kaiser’s personal health manager for a few months, I’m totally hooked on having access to that information 24/7. It is great to know that all of your healthcare professionals are reading from the same page when they are reviewing your case.
The security and privacy issues are only valid if our society continues to believe that community health is the sole responsibilty of the individual. In reality we are all paying for each others medical care whether we like it or not and we should embrace the technology to help lower human errors which will drive costs out of the system.
This is a brilliant move by Microsoft and quite a coup, though Kaiser did state in this morning’s call that they would be open to other platforms similar to Microsoft’s HealthVault (eg Google Health). This is a step in the right direction towards what the first comment from LN describes. Now the challenge is for Microsoft and Google to work with their development partners to create enough value for he end consumer that will actually lead to engagement and adoption. We still have a long ways to go. Wrote a longer post on the announcement over at www.chilmarkresearch.com
As for the comment by Dr. Cykiert, he is actually off-target as Kaiser has done a spectacular job with the roll-out of their consumer portal My Health Manager, which arguably is the most widely used PHR in the market today, even if it is tethered. Hard to argue with 30% adoption among members, which is roughly 5x the norm. Also, why does Revolution Health end up in stories like this (they really don’t belong) and heck, if you are going to mention them, might as well mention WebMD, but they don’t really belong here either.
I’m a big proponent of this type of system, but I’m waiting for the next big case where someone abuses the system to get their hands on certain prescription drugs, or worse.
John IT analyst: Dr. Cykiert is right however regarding his second point. A related point: I have tried to persuade another PHR developer/vendor (Medem) to start linking its excellent PHR product (iHealthRecord http://ihealthrecord.com) which has been available for several years with very little patient adoption to a number of EMR systems with which I have detailed knowledge as well eventually as any other out there. Basic data exchange between disparate systems is readily doable via web services. Use of the primary technologies that are generally included as part of web services (sorry for acronyms but these include XML-RPC, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, REST) has been pushed by many major and lesser known vendors. Microsoft, IBM, Google, Amazon are among the “brand-name” companies which have led the development and application of the technologies. All the techniques use open source software and are therefore usable by anyone however.
Another excellent PHR is Aetna’s. No linkage to physicians’ or hospitals’ EMR systems however to my knowledge.
Wendall, I have seen the Medem solution up close via demo - it really is not that great. It does support consumer-physician communication but I am not surprised that uptake has been slow. Medem must also struggle against entreched EMR plays, beyond AllScripts, which is very challenging.
BTW, I know the acronyms well and no, they will not make data exchange any easier. One needs to start with CCD, or the simpler CCR, and let’s not forget coding standards, of which it seems every institution has their own little spin on. Just slapping a Web Services wrapper around this stuff will not make the data liquid and useful.
If you like the tethered portal of Aetna’s, you’ll really like Kaiser’s
John: Web services are simply techniques for exchanging data and program calls among disparate systems. The continuity of care record or the continuity of care document or any other standards such as SNOMED define data elements. If disparate systems agree upon what the data elements represent in terms of real-life conditions consistently, then data fitting those elements are what is exchanged. Agreement on what the data represents is what counts. That has largely been acknowledged. The web services techniques are simply neutral means of exchanging data that all systems can use no matter how disparate and provide means of entering firewalls through HTTP usually, so no specially protocols have to be implemented (although BEEP provides a means of creating more appropriate applications protocols).
Medem’s provider feature is very weak. The basic PHR that a consumer/patient completes is very good. Big difference.
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