Posted on 07 March 2008.
Here is an excellent blog post about HealthVault vs. Google Health.
It’s worth a read-through, but the thing that’s clear to us is that neither Microsoft or Google is thinking too much yet about how the hospital institution will interact with the data they collect. Since they’re more in the PHR model — well, Google’s is squarely; HealthVault is just a storage space, but that’s surprisingly useful for reasons you’ll read about in coming weeks — you still have the problem of another stream of care-related data.
Most hospitals are still struggling to connect the dots and collect everything that happens inside their walls, never mind deal with information a patient may have. So while both of these applications might help the physician/patient face-to-face interaction become a more informed experience, they don’t do much to address the operational failure in healthcare of how data is distributed in a system.
In other words, nurses will still be answering phones from referring docs, scratching down notes, and flagging paper files with sticky notes for some time.
(And hey, that’s more an observation than a complaint.)
About Paul Griffiths
Paul has been CEO of MedTouch since April of 2007 and, prior to that, held the position of COO. As a co-founder, he has helped set the vision for the company from its inception. Paul is an active speaker in the healthcare marketing community. In addition to the dozen webinars MedTouch presents each year, Paul can be seen and heard giving lively talks around the country about helping healthcare organizations succeed online: from New England (NESHCo), to Tennessee (TSHPRM), Florida (FSHPRM), and Las Vegas (Annual Healthcare Internet Conference).
Prior to MedTouch, Paul managed online brand experiences for a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He has over 15 years of combined experience in online commerce, interactive marketing, experience design and content management solutions. Most notably, he directed the consumer-facing channel for the now defunct Send.com, an online gift delivery network that raised $45 million from such VC luminaries as Greylock, Highland Capital, Benchmark and Charles Rivers Ventures in the late 1990s.
Paul earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
When he’s not traveling across the country to visit clients or to speak at healthcare conferences, Paul runs a humanitarian non-profit with his wife. He’s thrilled to finally have a yard for his dogs and two boys, and often daydreams of spending a summer in Iceland.
I am a medical doctor. I see patients every day. Including the Emergency Room where I work.
During thousands years physician have follow this hippocrates oath sencente: What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
So at the moment I designed the keyose (www.keyose.com) service, I have a very clear idea: privacy must be the priority number one!
Read more on:
http://blog.keyose.com/2008/02/28/broken-privacy-is-a-real-threat-trust-me/
Interestingly, at the moment PHR are not covered by any HIPAA regulations and are subject the terms of service of the providers. It seems hospitals are going to have to think through the implications of integrating this data into their health records (if a patient would want this information).