On Monday, Kaiser Permanente announced it would partner with Microsoft to create a pilot project that will link Kaiser's patient data with Microsoft's personal health record service, the New York Times reports.
The pilot project, which initially will only be available to Kaiser's 156,000 employees, will link patient information from the Kaiser's My Health Manager PHR with Microsoft's HealthVault PHR tool. The pilot will run until November.
If the project is successful, Kaiser will offer the service to all of its 8.7 million members in nine states and Washington, D.C. (Lohr, New York Times, 6/10).
During the pilot stage, Kaiser will be testing the program's security to ensure it meets safety standards, according to Anna-Lisa Silvestre, Kaiser's vice president of online services (Lawton, Wall Street Journal, 6/9).
Similar online PHR initiatives are under way by companies such as Revolution Health and Google (Beasley, Reuters/Washington Post, 6/9).
Reaction
Kaiser and Microsoft officials said the pilot program's long-term goal is to bring more medical data online and provide patients with the ability to share their data with health care providers and pharmacies.
Peter Neupert, a Microsoft corporate vice president, said that another goal of the project is to be able to transfer information from HealthVault to Kaiser's PHR system (Wall Street Journal, 6/9). He added, "We think we can start to transform the management of chronic conditions."
Silvestre said Kaiser also considered partnering with Google but was impressed with Microsoft's technology for protecting the privacy and security of personal data. She added that Microsoft uses the same Web-based format, called Continuity of Care Document, that Kaiser uses. Google is using a different Web-based format, called Continuity of Care Record (New York Times, 6/9).