PHR’s may finally be a reality with the increased use of auto-population technology.

 

The Aetna offering, called SmartSource, has been tested by the company’s 35,000 employees. It will be offered to employers that provide worker health benefits through Aetna, in a gradual introduction across the country that will begin in August.

 

The company, which has 16.8 million enrollees, plans to provide the service free to its customers, saying it wants to help people manage their own health care. Aetna hopes the service can help it recruit and retain employer-customers worried about the costs of care.

With the online offering, Aetna will be entering an arena in which WebMD is the leader for consumer medical information and where medical providers like the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Medical School are also players. The Web giants Google and Microsoft are also laying plans to let consumers link electronic medical records and online research.

 

Using a medical search engine developed by Healthline, a medical database software developer, Aetna is piecing together medical profiles that are based on records of each insured member’s illnesses and diagnostic tests and that also make assumptions about their health concerns as reflected in their search topics.

 

Another large player using auto-population technology is Google.  Last month they launched Google Health.  The system will store patients' health records online and allow users to import records from different health provider systems. Google Health will also let users search for doctors and find health care information from Google Scholar, discussion groups and other sources. In addition, third-party developers will develop direct-to-consumer services, such as medication tables or immunization reminders. 

 

Google is currently testing the PHR service with 1,370 volunteers at the Cleveland Clinic. Google will not use advertising to support Google Health and that it is relying on increased Web traffic to make the site profitable.

 

"We're going to partner with leaders in health care to cross-connect...and apply the principles of the Internet" to improve the industry, he said. "The first principle is, it's the user's data. The data follows the consumer wherever they go" when they change doctors or insurers. Currently, there are more than 200 personal health record systems that are closed or tethered to a particular health system, he said.  Google Health aims to untether the 2 billion X-rays taken in the U.S. each year, 62 million CAT scans, and other health data, and put them all online for the patients to access.

 

Other large players vying for the personal health record market:  Microsoft Corp. last year introduced a service called HealthVault, and AOL co-founder Steve Case is backing Revolution Health, which offers similar online tools. Microsoft's service has ads, but they aren't personalized based on health records or searches. Revolution Health does not have ads on its health records service.

 

On the employer side of the equation is Dossia, an employer consortium that is currently testing aspects of the infrastructure, linking data from insurers, pharmacies and other sources to a central repository.   Dossia will then approach dozens of provider organizations in the cities where most of its members’ employees work to begin building links to their electronic health records systems.