Cerner President Trace Devanny said he does not see much value in new personal health record services from Google and Microsoft, the Kansas City Business Journal reports.
During a shareholder meeting last month, Cerner CEO Neal Patterson referred to the PHR sites as "electronic shoeboxes" that require consumers to import and update most health data.
Google and Microsoft's entry into the PHR industry could help advance federal policy to create a national network of independent health record banks "because their voice is so much bigger than ours," Patterson said. However, he added that Cerner is better positioned to deliver PHR services because its software collects information from "the actual processes of health care."
Patterson told Cerner shareholders, "We've already had Google coming to us, wanting to partner with us, because they know we've got the real data."
During its pilot, Google Health partnered with three pharmacy chains and a couple of academic medical centers that have agreed to provide patient data to the site. Users who want comprehensive data in their PHRs must add the information themselves or pay MediConnect Global, an online record retrieval service and Google Health partner, to do it. Retrieving up to 100 pages of medical information using MediConnect Global costs $98.
Future Competition?
By acquiring a health IT company in the future, Google or Microsoft might expand their health care scope to compete for the record-banking revenue that Cerner is after, the Business Journal reports.
However, Richard Close, an analyst who covers Cerner for Jefferies & Co., said he does not believe that the new PHR sites will have much effect on Cerner because its core business is automating hospital and physician office functions.
The PHR market is "not really the core growth driver for Cerner on a go-forward basis," Close said (Roberts, Kansas City Business Journal, 6/2).