Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Big wigs playing in personal health information arena
Next up this morning, representatives from WebMD, Microsoft HealthVault, Aetna, Google Health, and Yahoo! Health are giving presentations and demonstrations of consumer-targetted health information aggregator platforms. Most of these are variations on personal health records (PHR) that can send out health-related alerts to their users; offer online coaches and medication management applications; and generally provide a (hopefully) convenient and secure place for consumers to store and access their personal health information.
Roni Zeiger from Google Health emphasized an important theme: "I want my data." He noted that satisfying this consumer demand needs to be easy and useful; he views the latter as the greater challenge, one that may take a few years to achieve. General consensus was that PHRs will eventually be embraced, but the question is when. This trend is perhaps analogous to the evolution of online banking. Early on, many people were reluctant to trust the transmission of their financial information to the Internet. Today, online banking has become far more commonplace.
The head of federal Health Information Technology office, Robert Kolodner, was invited to comment on the panel's presentations, and he picked up on the theme of trust. He observed that early adopters or innovators are risk takers. The majority of consumers won't come on board and use PHRs until trust is well-established. He sees these platforms as a means of empowering individuals, but he noted that allowing people to remain in control of their personal health information will be key. Kolodner cautioned about the dangers of siloed applications--the PHR equivalent of the VHS vs. Beta battle for supremacy--and encouraged interoperability across platforms. I am skeptical about whether Kolodner's concern will be answered.
One of the panelists stated that the value proposition for PHRs is obvious. What do you think?