HealthVault to Share Patient Data

A Microsoft-hosted online service called HealthVault offers personal medical data storage and enables users to share selected data with healthcare companies. If widely adopted by patients and healthcare organizations, the service could help lower administrative costs and reduce medical errors in the highly decentralized U.S. healthcare system and give Microsoft and its partners a stronger position in that system. However, HealthVault faces some of the same problems that scuttled Microsoft’s earlier foray into online personal data storage, and competitive initiatives have a head start.

Health Data Sharing and Acquisition

HealthVault, currently in beta, is an online service for storing patient data and accessing other types of healthcare information. Microsoft hopes that the service will simplify data transfer for patients, providers, and payers in the fragmented U.S. healthcare system, reducing costs and medical errors. A particular beneficiary will be what Microsoft calls “family health managers”—users (typically women) who manage healthcare records for their families.