PHR Interoperability: Winning Hearts and Minds

There has been much attention given to Google's recent announcement regarding their PHR (personal health record) pilot initiative with the Cleveland Clinic. Microsoft also just drew publicity for its announcement to fund $3 million to outside parties to research and develop online tools to improve health. There has also been considerable discussion, in the wake of these announcements, regarding privacy concerns as consumer use these tools.

What may be more significant in the long run, is the ultimate interoperability of these initiatives. If we want to simplify health care, technology must be a partner. But technology can become an obstacle if it consists of endless disparate tools and proprietary systems that can’t relate with other.

Microsoft, received less publicity, but may be making more of an impact, for its just announced accelerated push towards interoperability with its HealthVault PHR platform. Further down the page in Microsoft’s just issued press release, they stated that “the company will release HealthVault XML interfaces under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP). The OSP is a simple and clear way to help developers and solution providers working with commercial or open source software to implement specifications through a simplified method of sharing of technical assets, while also recognizing the legitimacy of intellectual property. Further reinforcing the company’s commitment to open interoperability, Microsoft is hosting a HealthVault community open source project — an implementation of the HealthVault API wrapper for the Java development environment — on Microsoft CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting Web site. This will be the first of many projects designed to make it easier for developers and solution providers to use the language and framework of their choice to deliver HealthVault-compatible applications.”

What does all that technical jargon mean? That Microsoft has shifted, at least somewhat, from its historic total proprietary system stance, to a more open system that encourages interoperability. This should bode well for HealthVault, and PHRs in general.

Blogger Dana Blankenhorn gets it right in the ZDNet Healthcare blog: “In the context of the medical market, however, Microsoft’s process seems more reasonable. This is less about gaining the trust of consumers than it is about winning over doctors, hospitals, and payment processors.”

If we are to simplify healthcare from a technology standpoint, this is about winning the hearts and minds of doctors, hospitals and payment processors, which requires interoperability.