Healthcare
My Health History
My personal health records are scattered all over different doctor’s offices, hospitals, and boxes at home. Instead of waiting for my providers, health plans, and pharmacies to agree on, implement, and integrate EMR systems, I want to find out what I can do to have a better view of my own health history.
The task seems to be very similar to getting a handle on my cash spending. I have receipts from stores and restaurants everywhere: in my wallet, in my bag, and on my desk. I tried different ways to get an understanding of where my wallet cash went, using Quicken, limiting to credit card spending as much as possible, or setting an overall weekly budget and skipping the details. It was only until when I aggregated all of my information into Mint.com that I felt I had an accurate picture that I could use to analyze my past habits and predict my future spending. What is the equivalent of Quicken and Mint.com for my health records?
I found three websites that I could start using immediately for free: Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and WebMD Health Manager. All three sites have the ability to capture a personal profile, allergies, conditions, medications, and procedures. These sites try to make record keeping easy for the users. For example, proper medical terms can be selected from a pre-populated list. I would be able to record my medical data using any one of these sites.
Beyond recoding the essentials, these websites offers a few different features.
Importing information. Google Health can link my profile with other health vendors. For example: CVS, Walgreens, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic, or Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA all integrate with Google Health. Microsoft HealthVault can also link with other applications. For now, I am willing to manually enter my data since the volume of my data is not huge.
Exporting information. I am most concerned about how I can retrieve information from these websites. With all the effort to collect my data, I should be able to share the information with my doctor. Google Health allows exporting all or partial data to Excel. WebMD Health Manager and HealthVault can both print a summary report of the whole profile. None of them allows me to customize a print out.
Sharing. With GoogleHealth, I can share with anyone who has an email address. Other people will be able to read my whole profile without the ability to make changes. WebMD Health Manager allows me to share the same login with others who can have sub-accounts under my (primary) account. Microsoft Health Vault lets me share via email as well. It adds a level of sophistication to the sharing feature by allowing me to specify share level (view, view and modify, or custodian) and information type (allergy, appointments, etc; there are 73 options to select from).
Extra features.WebMD has a dedicated section to manage health for children and a health assessment survey, Healthquotient. Unfortunately, I could not complete the survey because it asked for advanced values such as my LDL, HDL, Triglyceride level, glucose level, etc. Microsoft Health Vault helps with wellness and fitness management by tracking your height, weight, etc. It can also link with medical devices, such as Weight Scales, Blood Pressure Monitors, Blood Glucose Monitors, Peak Flow Meters, Pulse Oximeter, and Heart Rate Monitors. Microsoft Health Vault asks for Emergency or Provider contact information. WebMD Health Manager can save Coverage information.
In summary, there is not a clear winner among the three tools. Google Health is simple and straightforward. WebMD targets parents and educated healthcare consumers. Microsoft HealthVault seems to have a broader focus. My immediate goal is to take a comprehensive look at my health history. How I can use this information – sharing with whom about what at what level – is not clear yet. Also, by trying to collect my records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies, I will learn more about what information is available to me. After sometime, I may end up taking the same approach with my health history as with my petty cash: don’t bother to track every single detail (and conversation) possible.
For now, a simple tool is good.
Tags: 
Mindy is a project manager at Medullan, with experience in managing both software development and product deployment. Currently, she is focusing on providing valuable business solutions to health care and life sciences organizations in the U.S.Discussion
4 comments for “My Health History”
Post a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
First – I think it’s important to understand the difference between Mint and Quicken.
Second, I’d be interested to see an update in a few weeks and a few months – are these tools useful enough for you to continue to use? Is their function valuable enough to spite the features they may not offer yet or the pains it takes to use them? I only continued to use Quicken because it was something I needed to use – a necessary evil. Mint on the other hand, adds value and keeps me coming back.
It’s nice that these PHR’s are available – but I’d like to have the utopia where all my providers/specialists are able to put in their findings about me – and are willing to.
That requires lots of integration across separate systems, which means agreement of technical standards, etc. Seems like a long way off.
PHR’s are a nice consumer-oriented step. But I feel like we’ve got a way to go.
I too am becoming acutely aware of how my health records are dispersed as I am currently in the process of locating and migrating to a new primary care physician. The one thing that leapt out to me as missing in the above discussion is any talk about security. To me, I want to also be assured that my health record is going to be protected in the same way my money in protected in my online banking system. When faced with a choice between two sites, regardless of how they fare against each other on some of these issues, I’m very likely to go with the option that gives me the greatest sense of the security and control of my personal information.
So let’s make sure we distinguish acutely between privacy and security. I certainly agree that there is no question about how personal information need only be accessible by those with the authorization to view it.
But I would also argue that (and I’m thinking about blogging about this as well) privacy is more a soft currency today than it is something people hold near and dear. Social networks survive on the notion that people are willing to sacrifice some privacy to receive value in exchange. Would you use a PHR that analyzed your health information to make recommendations that could save you money or lead to better outcomes?