Tag Archive: health

Insurance company Aetna has become the first major insurer to sign on to Microsoft’s HealthVault platform, saying it will offer customers the ability to transfer personal information and medical records to a HealthVault account. Once in a HealthVault account, users will be able to dictate who can have access to their medical information, including health care providers, health plans, and even Web-based applications.

Aetna customers will be able to transfer information from Aetna’s Personal Health Record (PHR) system to a HealthVault account in November; beginning at some point in 2009, customers will also be able to transfer information from a HealthVault account to Aetna PHR.

The United States’ largest not-for-profit health plan Kaiser Permanente has announced it will be participating in a pilot project to enable the transfer of medical records from its own systems to Microsoft’s HealthVault online health site. Initially, the project will be limited to volunteers selected from KP’s 156,000 employees, but if the project works out, the service could be extended to KP’s nearly 9 million members. The announcement could me a major feather in the cap of Microsoft HealthVault, which is competing with Google Health to offer consumers a safe way to tore and selectively enable access to heath care records online—although the entire field is fraught with significant privacy concerns.  Read more...