Nonprofit health insurer Kaiser Permanente announced this week that its
159,000 employees would be the first employees to participate in Microsoft’s
online health record, Healthvault.
Healthvault, which launched in October, built its online health record so
that companies could easily integrate it with other software that is currently
used to store medical records.
Kaiser, which made the announcement Monday, June 9, will allow employees to
transfer prescription information, test results and other health data from the
company’s own online personal health record, My Health Manager, to Microsoft's
Health Vault.
If the pilot program for employees is successful, Kaiser said it will make
the service available to its 8 million members nationwide, according to news
reports.
The announcement came a month after Google announced the launch of a similar
site, Google Health. Other employers, most notably the employer group Dossia,
have been busy designing similar Web sites that securely store online medical
records.
Dossia, an employer coalition led by Wal-Mart, Intel, Pitney Bowes, BP and
Applied Materials, relaunched its efforts last fall after switching technology
developers for the creation of a personal electronic health record for employees
of member companies.
—Jeremy Smerd