[LINK] Microsoft product to host health records

[Jan Whitaker]

http://businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2007/tc2007103_831100.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story
http://tinyurl.com/ys22o8

Microsoft Wants Your Health Records
Its new service will store your data in one 
place—and search ads could make it pay. Will 
enough people put their trust in HealthVault?

by Jay Greene


Step into a medical office, and you're faced with 
a paradox of modern medicine. Just beyond the 
receptionist's desk are all sorts of cutting-edge 
medical technology. Computed tomography scanners. 
Electrocardiogram machines. Bone densitometers.

But as you approach that desk to check in, you 
take a trip back in time. There the receptionist 
hands you a clipboard of forms. For the umpteenth 
time you fill in your name, age, allergies, 
medical history, and the like. For all the 
medical breakthroughs created by technology, 
medical records remain an anachronism.

That's changing as more companies vie to bring 
medical records into the Digital Age. Webmd 
Health Corp. (WBMD) and insurers such as Aetna 
(AET), United HealthCare (UNH), and WellPoint 
(WLP) have provided electronic medical records to 
policyholders for years. More recently large 
employers such as Wal-Mart (WMT) and AT&T (T) 
have been banding together to offer electronic 
health record systems. Revolution Health Group, 
led by former America Online (TWX) boss Steve 
Case, is trying to crack the market, as is search giant Google (GOOG).

Introducing the Contender from Redmond

Now, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is joining the fray. 
On Oct. 4 the software giant is scheduled to 
launch a search engine-supported service to help 
patients coordinate disparate pieces of 
health-care information, from lab results and 
prescription records to X-rays and daily blood 
pressure and allergy readings. Aware that 
patients are skittish about putting the most 
personal data into a file server that's 
potentially available to prying eyes, Microsoft 
promises that patients alone will control access to their health information.

Privacy concerns aren't the only reason Microsoft 
may have a tough go of it. Patient health records 
are about as resistant to information technology 
as the common cold is to a cure. Doctors with 
small practices haven't always been keen to make 
the investment in computer systems when the 
payoff seems so unclear. Few hospitals have 
bothered to set up systems to retrieve data from patients' electronic files.

New Equation

Perhaps the biggest hurdle, though, is that there 
isn't any real economic incentive to digitize 
data. Paying for the computers that handle and 
store medical data, not to mention training 
office staff to use the systems, costs money. And 
the financial payoff is uncertain, at best. Dr. 
Robert A. Jenders, an internist who also works in 
the medical information systems unit at 
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, says 
initiatives such as Microsoft's are encouraging. 
But the amount of training needed to switch over 
to computerized systems may be more trouble than 
it's worth for many time-stressed physicians. 
"Their office practice works very well as it is 
now," Jenders says. "And time is money."

Microsoft, though, figures it can succeed where 
others have stumbled. It has changed the economic 
equation so that hospitals and doctors don't need 
to invest in new equipment to use HealthVault, 
its online repository for patient health 
information. Medical records software vendors, 
such as Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (MDRX), 
have worked with Microsoft so that doctors using 
Allscripts' software can easily send files over 
the Web to HealthVault. Doctors' offices that 
don't use such software can securely fax the data 
into a patient's digital files.

To launch and build HealthVault, Microsoft has 
enlisted Peter Neupert. A Microsoft veteran, 
Neupert forged the deal that created MSNBC in the 
mid-1990s and later launched the online magazine 
Slate. He left the company in 1998 to 
successfully introduce Drugstore.com (DSCM), 
where he stayed until 2004 before rejoining 
Microsoft in the wake of the dot-com bust. 
Neupert, now head of Microsoft's Health Solutions 
Group, figures he can build a business that 
generates "a billion-plus" in revenue from 
HealthVault as well as another business that sells software to hospitals.

[snip]

Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/

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