Recommendations for Hospitals Regarding a PHR Relationship

I have published a number of previous notes about personal health records (PHRs) including a recent one about Health Vault with a reference to Google Health (see: Some Clues About the Microsoft Healthcare IT Strategy). I have come to the conclusion that there is very little future for the so-called untethered PHRs, which is to say web-based stand-alone PHRs. The only ones that will thrive are those with links to hospital EMRs such that some of the medical information contained in the hospital electronic records can be replicated to the tethered PHRs. It is impractical to suggest families will assume the onerous task of hand-entering even a small portion of their health records to a web-based system. John Moore, who blogs over at the Chilmark Research, recently discussed the relationship between Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Microsoft's HealthVault (see: BIDMC Makes it Official - Signs on to HealthVault) following a previously announced deal with Google Health. Below is an excerpt from his note with boldface emphasis mine:

After the Cleveland Clinic, Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) was the next hospital system to allow their customers to export their health records from BIDMC’s homegrown “PatientSite” to Google Health. Yesterday, BIDMC announced that the customer now has a choice and may also export their records to Microsoft’s HealthVault. In speaking to one of my contacts at Microsoft, he stated that the beauty of the BIDMC announcement, at least from Microsoft’s perspective, is that BIDMC took on complete responsibility for making this happen. BIDMC simply asked the HealthVault folks early on what were the required steps and after that, they did it all themselves.  No hand holding or nudges from Microsoft.

According to John, we will see others emulate the BIDMC PHR initiatives in the future and the following guidelines for hospitals will hopefully prevail:

1. Acknowledgment that the consumer has a clear, unhindered right to access their records and put them wherever they desire.
2. Pick no favorites in the platform race, much too early for that.   Instead, plan to participate/allow access to all major platform plays (today there is but three, Dossia, Google Health and HealthVault).
3. Take personal responsibility to make it happen. Don’t wait for some gift or incentive, instead just decide that this is the right thing to do for your customer.

I have nothing to add to this -- this is very wise advice indeed. Incidentally, John will be lecturing on the topic of PHRs  at the Lab InfoTech Summit that will take place in Las Vegas on March 16-18, 2009. I am sure that he will be worth listening to on this topic.