Microsoft HealthVault Beta
Ahhh.. the joy of Health - paperwork. If you’re like me and you’re part of a family with 4 or more members, you’ll find that after a while the paperwork piles up - or gets lost. However, it seems Microsoft are developing a new way to store all of this information online - for free.
Microsoft HealthVault is currently in beta, however anyone can sign up and take a look at this new system which basically allows you to upload and store your health documents, say medical reports or scans.
Theoretically speaking, you could have this setup to be shared with your doctors.. so that they can easily access the information. Even older age members of the community (say from a nursing home in Brooklyn) can store information. However, if you sit back and think about it - you’ve giving all your personal information to a multi-billion dollar company. A lot of people have been loud and clear about their thoughts on giving information to FaceBook and MySpace.
Whilst this seems like a brilliant system, I’m still weary about hacking - as I too have had my Windows Live ID hacked and have lost all my information stored in it. Unfortunately, this is what comes with technology.
So what do you think? Check it out today at www.MicrosoftHealthBeta.com and let me know what you think!
OFFICIAL OVERVIEW:
HealthVault is an online storage place for your health information. It can store many different types of information, such as:
- Hospital and doctor’s visit records
- Immunization records
- Data from health and fitness devices you can connect to your computer
- Exercise statistics
- And many more
One HealthVault account can contain the Health Records for many people. For example, you could have Health Records for yourself, your spouse, each of your children, elderly relatives whose care you manage, and even your pets.
You can share some or all of the health information contained in a Health Record. For example, if your spouse also has a HealthVault account, you can share ownership of the family’s Health Records. You can give your personal trainer access to just your exercise logs. You can allow your hospital to upload discharge instructions, or your pediatrician to view and update immunization records.
With HealthVault, all of your health information is in one place that you control. Created in cooperation with leading privacy advocates, respected security experts, and dozens of the world’s leading healthcare organizations, HealthVault was built on the principle that you should control your own health records and have access to online health management tools that you trust.
One of the main ways that health information is added to HealthVault is through HealthVault programs. HealthVault programs perform specific tasks, such as logging and graphing your exercise statistics. You have complete control over what data, if any, programs can read from each Health Record, and whether or not programs can add or change data. You will find a directory of HealthVault programs on the HealthVault Web site .
When you sign in to your HealthVault account, you can view the health information stored in your Health Records, see the history of who has accessed the data and what has been changed, share health information with other people or with programs, and update your account information.
Most of your interaction with the data in your Health Records will probably be through programs. As more programs are added to the HealthVault ecosystem over time, you will be able to store more types of information and access the information in increasingly useful ways.
Following are some examples of HealthVault programs:
HealthVault Connection Center is a program from the makers of HealthVault; it imports health data from computer-connectable health and fitness devices and uploads the data to HealthVault.
HealthVault Search is another program from the makers of HealthVault. HealthVault Search has an easy-to-use but sophisticated search engine that enables you to find exactly the health-related information you’re looking for. After you find what you want, you can store that information in a scrapbook that is connected to your HealthVault account.
In the HealthVault Programs Directory, you will find many Web-based programs that provide helpful health-related services. A program might, for example, chart your blood pressure readings, alert you when specific readings require attention, and give you helpful information about managing your blood pressure. Or, a program could display a list of your current medications (with links to Web articles that provide more information about the medication) and enable your doctor to update the list online.
