Institute For The Future

The race to online personal health records

As I have blogged before, Google Health has been pushing the idea of becoming the online repository for personal health records (PHRs), and, as the New York Times previously reported, Microsoft has been right behind them. Now it appears that Microsoft has beaten Google to the punch.

Yesterday, Microsoft launched HealthVault, "a software and services platform aimed at helping people better manage their health information." Peter Neupert, corporate vice president of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft, explained,

'Our focus is simple: to empower people to lead healthy lives. The launch of HealthVault makes it possible for people to collect their private health information on their terms and for companies across the health industry to deliver compatible tools and services built on the HealthVault platform.'

So what happened to Google? One factor may be that the head of Google Health and the main proponent there of online PHRs left the company in September. Search Engine Land confirmed rumors that Adam Bosworth was out the door. I have quoted Bosworth before on his enthusiastic push to have Google Health lead the way with PHRs:

Let’s put the patients in charge of their health and medical information. Let’s build a system which puts the people who are sick in control. For every single medical and health-related event, let’s make sure that patients can effortlessly retrieve and share their information in its totality and then use it to ensure that they get the best quality of care possible. It is their health.

 

It seems that Google Health has lost its steam, which may explain why Bosworth left.

 

For a great summary of what other bloggers are saying about this turn of events, check out Computerworld.com's ITBlog Watch.