Aetna to offer wealth of health data online

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Aetna Inc. is offering its members a new online hunt tool that links to easy-to-understand articles, local docs who specialise in their needs, as well as cost information based on their personal wellness record and benefits.

The service is a consequence of a partnership with Healthline Networks, a San Francisco health-technology company that develops software system to voyage wellness searches.

"Consumers are now shifting from a 'doctor is God' outlook to one of 'my physician is a possible ally ... but I necessitate to take control,' " said Dean Stephens, Healthline's president and main operating officer. "The grounds states a more than informed consumer is a healthier consumer. A healthier consumer costs less."

Today's proclamation is portion of an emerging tendency among Internet companies offering consumers ways to acquire wellness information and shop their medical wellness records online. Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Revolution Health, created by AOL co-founder Steve Case, have got all introduced assorted services in recent calendar months to assist patients form their medical information online.

This online pushing is also related to a bigger attempt promoted by the federal authorities to acquire docs and infirmaries to abandon their paper medical data files in favour of electronic records-keeping systems. Health suppliers have got been slow to do such as changes, in portion owed to costs and defects in the technology.

Unlike most other personal wellness records, Aetna's service will not necessitate patients to fill up in all their wellness inside information because much of that information can be culled from the insurer's claims history. The hunt engine - called Aetna SmartSource - ours information on Aetna's land site to show members with relevant consequences based on the footing they searched, personal profile, benefit program and other information.

"The bearer already have your wellness data, so there's not an issue of some 3rd political party excavation for information they might utilize against you," said Greg Sterling, analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence in San Francisco.

While privateness is always a concern when putting sensitive wellness information online, Aetna, as a wellness insurer, is required to follow with federal wellness privateness laws that make not use to companies such as as Microsoft and Google, Sterling said.

Aetna functionaries said they would not sell or share data, mark advertisements at consumers based on their hunt history or usage any information from medical hunts against a member.

"We have got claims information on people from twenty-four hours one. That information is between Aetna and the insured and is not used at all," said Toilet Bahl, caput of online merchandise designing for Aetna. "We've got this information, and we believe we could make a better occupation in presenting our resources to our members when they necessitate them."

Under Healthline and Aetna's agreement, the insurance company licences Healthline's software, which translates medical linguistic communication into more than easily understood footing and presents a custom-made search. Footing of the trade were not disclosed.

The new service is already being tested by the insurer's 30,000 employees and will be expanded to as many as 2 million clients by the end of this twelvemonth as portion of a airplane pilot program. Ultimately, the company said, it will be available to its 16.8 million members nationwide.

E-mail Queen Victoria Colliver at .

Microsoft, Kaiser Permanente Launch E-Health Record Pilot - InformationWeek

As the conflict to be the prima purveyor of consumers' Web-based personal wellness record tools heat ups up, Microsoft on Monday announced a airplane pilot programme with Kaiser Permanente, the nation's biggest wellness care organization, which launched its ain e-medical record programme for billions of patients a few old age ago.

The Kaiser Permanente and Microsoft airplane pilot programme takes to spread out functionality to the personal e-health records of Kaiser Permanente employees (who are also Kaiser Permanente patients), while providing to Microsoft a new pool of users as the seller shows to consumers at-large how they, too, can pull off their wellness information via Microsoft's HealthVault platform.

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The airplane pilot will prove the exchange of patient wellness information from Kaiser Permanente's My Health Director e-health record system to , which Microsoft unveiled last October as a Web-based service providing tools for consumers to pull off their ain wellness information and behavior private health-related Web-searches.

The Kaiser Permanente/Microsoft undertaking also come ups on the heels of last calendar month announcing the general handiness of .

That Google proclamation followed an e-health record airplane pilot launched last twelvemonth with more than than 1,600 patients, who signed on to have got their wellness information from the clinic's e-medical records incorporated into Google personal wellness record accounts. Last month, the Cleveland Clinic, as well as a few other health-care players, including respective big pharmaceutics iron and laboratory companies, announced they would also convey information to Google's Web-based personal wellness records when patients requested.

Beth State Of Israel Deaconess Checkup Center (BIDMC) is among the smattering of health-care suppliers that signed on to supply patient information to Google personal wellness records. However, the Boston-based medical centre -- which also lets patients to entree their e-medical data directly from BIDMC via a unafraid infirmary -- isn't playing favourites when it come ups to the consumer offers of personal wellness record services from Google and Microsoft. BIDMC will back up both platforms.

"We've already completed our paradigm for HealthVault," said Toilet Halamka, Congress of Industrial Organizations at CareGroup Healthcare System, which runs BIDMC. "I believe patients should be the stewards of their ain information and I'm committed to making information available to patients via any unafraid personal wellness record system they request," said Halamka in an interview with InformationWeek.

For its part, Microsoft have got been recruiting 3rd political parties to develop applications to run on HealthVault, and to date, about 40 such as applications have been developed, including those allowing patients to their blood pressure, glucose, and other key readings using personal wellness devices, and this information to share with their physicians, states Simon Peter Neupert, Microsoft Health Solutions Group corporate VP.