Microsoft Corp. launched a Web site Thursday for managing personal health and medical information, but privacy advocates worry that neither the technology nor U.S. law will protect patients' most confidential details.
From the consumer's point of view, Microsoft's HealthVault site is part filing cabinet, part library and part fax machine for an individual's or a family's medical records and notes.
The free site can store medical histories, immunization and other records from doctors' offices and hospital visits, including data from devices like heart monitors. It is also tied to a health information search engine the software maker launched last month.
Users can dole out access to different slices of their health data via e-mailed invitations to doctors, family members and other people as the need arises.
Microsoft has been kicking around the idea of a health site since at least 2000, when Chief Executive Steve Ballmer described a "health vault" in a speech to financial professionals in New York.
The software maker isn't the first to jump into the ring. Across the country, groups of providers are starting "regional health information organizations" to share data electronically.
Insurance providers and private companies market their own flavors of patient-controlled storehouses of records, and employers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. offer such tools to workers.
Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, has launched Revolution Health, an information Web site that offers a records management tool for paying members, and Google Inc. has indicated it will launch its own service.
Microsoft's Windows operating system runs more than 90 percent of the world's desktop computers, including those in hospitals and doctor's offices. The HealthVault site works with different operating systems and browsers, but Microsoft may have an edge with Windows desktop applications. The company launched one such program Thursday that helps upload data from devices like heart rate monitors.
The HealthVault site itself doesn't do much more than provide a window into stored information and a mechanism for sharing it. Microsoft hopes hospitals, doctors' offices, advocacy groups and insurance companies will build Web applications that patients will want to use.
The American Heart Association, American Lung Association and other organizations already have applications in the works, Microsoft said. And devices including blood glucose monitoring systems made by Johnson & Johnson will be able to upload data into the system.
Microsoft said CapMed, which already markets personal health record tools, also plans to create an application for HealthVault, as does Kryptiq Corp., whose program will help doctors send and receive information from HealthVault with technology they already use.
Microsoft said it plans to support HealthVault with advertising revenue from the search portion of the site.
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