Two weeks after Google has officially launched its
long-awaited Google Health, a product enabling users to upload and store
medical records from many sources and get relevant information, Microsoft Corp
and Kaiser Permanente, the biggest
More exactly, data kept in Kaiser’s personal health records,
including patients’ test results, prescriptions and immunizations will be transferred
in a secure way to Microsoft’s HealthVault, a Web site similar to Google
Health, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
This initiative is intended to give patients more control
and access to their medical information and also to lower health-care costs by
allowing consumers make better, more informed choices about their healthcare.
The new program will initially be open to only the 156,000
employees of the Oakland, California-based healthcare provider, the Wall Street
Journal said.
Both Microsoft’s Health Vault and Google’s Google Health
face serious criticism from privacy advocacy groups, which have already
expressed their concerns over the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act, which governs medical privacy but which might not cover
information stored with Google and Microsoft.
Also, many patients are still skeptical about sharing their
private medical information for fear they might get in the wrong hands and
their personal life might be affected one way or the other.
How well this kind of programs will be embraced by the
general population remains to be seen. In a world where the computer has become
irreplaceable, I think more and more people will forget about privacy issues
and access these programs trying this way to ease their life and reduce the time
dedicated to deal with their health problems.