Kaiser Permanente, the biggest U.S. health maintenance organization (HMO), has announced that it will collaborate with software giant Microsoft in a pilot program to store patient information in the latter's HealthVault, a Web service aimed at helping people better manage their health information.

The pilot program is open to the health care giant's own 156,000 employees and is expected to run until later this year. The Microsoft service might be offered to all of Kaiser's customers if the experiment is successful. It appears that data kept in Kaiser’s personal health records, including test results, prescriptions and immunizations will be transferred in a secure way to Microsoft’s HealthVault. The company has 8.7 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia.

Microsoft also collaborates with the Mayo Clinic and New York - Presbyterian Hospital in its HealthVault enterprise. However, a deal with Kaiser will finally give the innovative service serious momentum and will push it out of pilot phase. Kaiser is well known for its openness towards using information technology in its health care system.

The HealthVault repository account is an encrypted online e-health database where the users and their families can store their medical records such as blood tests, vaccinations and medical history and share it with doctors. The repository account can be used to upload the information from health devices, such as glucose or blood pressure monitors.

Security and identity are verified using Windows Live ID, the same sign-on protocol used for accessing the company's Web-based e-mail and instant-messaging services.