Kaiser and Microsoft Join Hands on Consumer Medical Records

Posted on | June 11, 2008 | Comments Off on Kaiser and Microsoft Join Hands on Consumer Medical Records

One half of the solutionKaiser Permanente, the largest non-profit HMO in the country, became an endorser of consumer health records this week with the announced partnership with Microsoft. Kaiser has 156,000 employees and 8.7 million customers spread over 9 states and the District of Columbia. They will test out the use of Microsoft’s Health Vault on their employees, and if successful, will make it available to their members.

This isn’t the first partnership of technology and health care. Both Microsoft and Google have partnered with academic medical centers before. But the Kaiser move shifts the power base of data management closer to the consumer versus the provider side.

Still there’s a long way to go in thinking with the major emphasis still on “fixing” rather then “planning.” Clearly you can’t get there from here. An interventional health care system is 180 degrees different from a preventive health care system. That’s why I suggest a parallel build-out: on the one hand doing exactly what Kaiser/Microsoft propose to do – partner with the people and the people caring for the people to better manage the existing chronic disease burden, embedding the management tools within the consumer records in such a way that adherence to treatment plans increases from a meager 25% to something closer to 75%. But doing just that leaves 90% of the benefit of Consumer Health Records, or as I call them – Lifespan Planning Records – (LPR’s) on the table.

No one has yet voiced a commitment to “the other hand”, which is leveraging the record as a forward-looking 100-year-long strategic health planning tool, not funded through health care dollars but through open platform free standard computer application platforms, and integrating advanced health, financial, education and social planning beginning at conception.

Now I keep looking in the announcement for someone to voice this opportunity for parallel build-out as a sign that our strategic health planning is advancing. But I haven’t seen it yet. I can understand why the players like Kaiser, Mayo, Cleveland Clinic and Microsoft, Intel and others gravitate to chronic disease, intervention and health center based solutions. That’s where the power has been and that’s where most of the current financial incentives are.

But to not voice what should be an enormous growth opportunity if designed well, with smooth integrated interfaces, and customized automatic information support and search triggered by your unique data, seems a huge omission. Maybe it’s such a good idea that the companies are quietly developing it below the radar screen and care not to air or debate it with their competitors. Any thoughts?