Work Remains in Creating Access to Online Health Records

OLDWICK, N.J., Jul 07, 2008 (A. M. Best via COMTEX) -- MSFT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Recent partnerships by two U.S. health insurers with technology giants Microsoft Corp. and Google highlight just how much work must be done to achieve easy access to personal health records.

Recently, Kaiser Permanente said it's working with Microsoft on a pilot program to give patients more control over their personal health information. It will connect Kaiser's personal health record, My Health Manager, to Microsoft's HealthVault, launched last October. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts became the first health insurer to partner with Google Health to create PHRs. Google Health, launched in May, allows patients to store and organize their medical records online (BestWire, June 13, 2008).

Many health insurers are likely to follow Kaiser and Blue Cross in teaming with tech companies because they can provide interoperability and portability, said Carlton Doty, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, a technology and marketing research firm. Kaiser Permanente, the largest nonprofit HMO in the United States, is viewed as a leader in PHRs. As an integrated HMO, its health plan, doctors and hospitals are under one roof and interoperability is "a little easier for them because they own the provider network" Doty said.

Tech companies are building partnerships with health insurers, said Robert Panepinto, a managing director of Connextions Health, a company that provides services to plans in the retail and individual market. "We believe it will continue to grow."

Most insurers can't offer portable records to members unless they partner with a Microsoft or a Google, Doty said. Aetna, for example, offers a PHR, called CareEngine, that serves as a repository of its members' health information based mostly on claims data, but it's not portable, he said.

Eventually, Aetna will allow its PHR to be portable, a company spokeswoman said. Dan Greden, Aetna's head of e-health product management, said members can print out their PHR and bring that information to their physician's office. Later this month, Aetna will add a new feature that allows members to delegate access for their physician to view a summary of their PHR, he said.

Currently, Kaiser's PHR provides members with several online health capabilities, such as e-mailing their doctor and refilling their prescriptions, said Anna-Lisa Silvestre, Kaiser's vice president of online services. But by partnering with HealthVault, members would be able to store various health data the member enters into the platform, such as blood pressure results using one of the home monitoring devices available today, she said.

Results from blood pressure monitors, blood glucose meters, heart rate monitors can be stored to the HealthVault platform, said Doty. A consumer could connect the device to their home computer through a USB port, he explained.

The pilot, Silvestre said, is testing whether Kaiser's system can securely send a health summary over to HealthVault. If successful, Kaiser would be able to take the data a member stores in HealthVault and enter it into their PHR. Eventually, the goal is for a member to able to take that entire health summary with them if they leave Kaiser to join another health plan, she said, referring to portability.

Adrienne Cyrulik, project manager in the e-health group at the Massachusetts Blues, said the company expect its members to have the option to import their Blue Cross claims data from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies and store the data directly into a Google Health profile by this fall. Blue Cross won't have access to a member?s Google account and won't be receiving data from Google, she said.

Currently, consumers do not perceive PHRs as having value because there's little interoperability, Doty said. The electronic PHR means nothing to them unless all of their health care providers have access to it, he said.

Cyrulik noted the Blues won?t be receiving any data from Google Health about members. "We are only providing data to them upon a member?s request and authorization." Providers and other health care professionals won't have access to a member?s information unless the member provides the Google documents to them, Cyrulik said.

The two partnerships with Kaiser and Blue Cross are "pet projects" of Microsoft and Google, which haven't yet gotten revenue from the deals, Doty said. However, "they are going to have to figure that out because they just can?t keep sinking money into this without return on investment.?

(By Fran Matso Lysiak, senior associate editor, BestWeek: fran.lysiak@ambest.com)

More News:   Market Updates | Stock Alerts | All Trading News | Stock Index