Monday, April 6, 2009

NewYork-Presbyterian Offers Digital Records - NYTimes.com

Online personal health records — controlled by patients themselves, not by hospitals, doctors, insurers or employers — have been available for years. Yet only a small percentage of Americans have digital personal health records today, analysts estimate.

A major obstacle to adoption has been getting useful medical and patient information into personal health records. Typing one's personal health information into an online form is time-consuming, mind-numbing and error-prone.

To overcome that challenge, Microsoft and Google have announced partnerships in recent months with large health care providers like Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente to explore transferring patient data automatically into personal health records.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, whose centers and clinics provide about 20 percent of the health care in New York, is the first large institution to move beyond the pilot stage this week as it begins to offer consumer-controlled health records for patients, and its experience will be closely watched in the industry.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/technology/companies/06health.html?th&emc=th