Announced a year ago with much fanfare, Dossia, a product initially of Intel, Wal-Mart, Pitney Bowes, BP and Applied Materials, promised to develop what the health care industry has not: a patient-focused personal electronic health record that could be accessed by a person’s medical providers and by patients regardless of who provided or paid for their health insurance. Cardinal Health later joined the group and, more recently, AT&T and Sanofi-Aventis became members. All companies have committed $1.5 million to the project.

This summer, however, Dossia found itself embroiled in a lawsuit with its technology provider, Omnimedix, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon.

Dossia said the group didn’t meet its milestones and Omnimedix said it wasn’t being paid. Details of the dispute remain unknown, as a court granted Dossia’s request to seal the records.

Late last month, however, Dossia announced it was starting over with a new technology provider, the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program based at Children’s Hospital Boston, which has developed a personal health record called Indivo.

To accompany the change, the founding member companies recently announced they would not only staff Dossia, but do so with their own employees.

“When we started this thing a year ago, we realized this is a learning adventure,” says Colin Evans, Dossia’s president and director of policy and standards for Intel’s health group. “It became clear as we worked through this that our interests were better served if we were directly involved.”

J.D. Kleinke, chairman and chief executive of Omnimedix, would not comment on the case but believes it would be difficult for Dossia to manage the project more closely without accessing private employee data.

“We don’t believe a system that is developed and operated by employers will be trusted by employees,” he says.

Evans said the project would be managed by Dossia, but that only their technology partner would have access to data.

“We’re bringing in experienced senior people to make sure the project gets managed properly,” he says. “That does not mean the companies are operating the system—that, somehow, that means they have access to the data.”

The eight member companies have about 5 million employees. Other Dossia executives, each of whom has experience managing computer engineering or health benefits, include Bob Hartley, vice president of global compensation and benefits for Applied Materials; Carolyn Walton, a vice president in Wal-Mart’s information systems division; Tom Foth, an inventor and engineer at Pitney Bowes; and Dave Hammond, vice president of enterprise architecture of Cardinal Health.

“Most health information is pretty boring unless you’re a celebrity,” says Glen Tullman, chief executive of AllScripts Healthcare Solutions, a health care software company. “I have total confidence that we can both technically and legally protect people’s privacy. The real focus is, how do we get people to use this stuff? I think employers are the best party to do this because they are the ones paying the bills.”

Evans says some employees will begin using the personal health record by the end of this year, and that by the end of 2008, the group could take on new members. The health record will be designed to fit with commercially available software being developed by companies like Microsoft, Google and Revolution Health so employees could continue to access their record regardless of their employer.

—Jeremy Smerd