Personal Health Record discussion

As he did with Google’s PHR, talking even about trust issues, Vince Kuraitis analyzes Microsoft’s HealthVault and four misconception about it:

Misconception #1: HealthVault is a personal health record (PHR).

Misconception #2: People don’t trust Microsoft, so they won’t sign up for and use HV.

Misconception #3: Patients don’t understand PHRs, don’t want them, and don’t know what they’d do with them. This is a rate limiting step to market growth for HV and its partners.

Misconception #4: By launching HealthVault first, Microsoft beats Google to the punch.

Catalan, and also the Spanish, health care system is not as market-oriented as that of the USA. Health is still a collective good or social good and most of the health care providers are bureaucratic and rigid organizations run by regional government, which could be considered as a negative externality. As far as bureaucratic and rigid organizations have more difficulties to implement health information systems, Personal Health Information Platform, launched by the government directly to citizens, it could be a good tool to put pressure on these organizations to develop or implement changes related to their information systems.

Furthermore, this Personal Health Information Platform could be an institutional Internet health content management system controlled by healthcare professionals and citizens by means of Web 2.0 tools where lay and expert knowledge could be mixed.