Fred Trotter raises some important points about healthcare records in two posts on Microsoft’s HealthVault. In Failing the seven generations test; he talks about the need for information to be maintained for generations. I don’t necessarily disagree, although I do believe that once we have sufficient knowledge from studies like the Framingham study, we will know enough about the genetic basis of disease and hopefully the environmental contribution that we will be able to manage healthcare without knowledge of prior generations other than what we know now. However, his point is well taken. Microsoft, Google, etc need to sit down with the regulatory agencies and the medical community and decide what standards need to be adopted to make healthcare records portable and the ability to backup and manage them outside of just specific repositories. In Abusing Vs. Implementing Standards he does mention HL7, and calls it a weak standard. I won’t disagree, but HL7 is the way to go. We should work on making it a better standard, and as far as I know many people are. The key is that these standards are machine readable, and can be moved from one system to the other. It’s up to software developers to make reading the information (and entering it) relatively easy. Does Microsoft have a poor track record of maintaining standards? All one has to do is look at Internet Explorer and you will agree that they are not the best at adopting standards. But once again, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s early days, and Microsoft is not necessarily stupid. This is not office software or a desktop OS. They have to play nice with others, and the bet here is that in the long term they will.
Anyway, Fred asked me to respond via video. I’ve had a frustrating day with audio interfaces, etc, so it’s not the most lucid response, but it adds to some of the points mentioned above
Further reading
Does Microsoft’s HealthVault really protect your privacy?
Technorati Tags: Microsoft, HealthVault, Standards, Fred Trotter
2 Comments
There are more than 200 vendors of PHR in the world today and also with the entry of big corporations into the world of PHR,there is not much of difference about the way in which the records are created and stored among all these vendors.
However,there is a immediate need to educate consumers about using PHR tool,prior to releasing new versions into the market.Not many people are even aware of the term PHR,let alone using them.
Google is walking in right direction by taking baby steps before releasing its PHR version.Microsoft version of PHR is just a aggregation of vendors selling PHR with nothing new to offer.
There are more than 200 vendors of PHR in the world today and also with the entry of big corporations into the world of PHR,there is not much of difference about the way in which the records are created and stored among all these vendors.
However,there is a immediate need to educate consumers about using PHR tool,prior to releasing new versions into the market.Not many people are even aware of the term PHR,let alone using them.
Google is walking in right direction by taking baby steps before releasing its PHR version.Microsoft version of PHR is just a aggregation of vendors selling PHR with nothing new to offer.