Blue Cross of Massachusetts Teams With Google Health on Health Records

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts said it has become the first health insurer to partner with Google Health to create personal health records for its members. Google Health, launched in May by online search engine Google, allows patients to store and organize their medical records online.

Integration with the Google Health platform is expected to be complete this fall, when Blue Cross said its 3 million members will be able to manage their health information in a secure place and share it with health care providers who don't have access to their medical claims data.

The latest partnership comes as the playing field for storing and exchanging people's personal health information continues to grow. Earlier this week, Kaiser Permanente, the largest nonprofit health maintenance organization in the United States, said it is working with software giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) on a pilot program to give patients more control over their personal health information. The program will connect Kaiser's personal health record, My Health Manager, to Microsoft's consumer health platform, HealthVault, which was launched last October. It initially will be available to Kaiser's 159,000 employees and if successful, will be expanded to include the HMO's 8 million-plus members (Best/Wire, June 10, 2008).

The Massachusetts Blues, meanwhile, said its members can choose to open the free Google Health account and authorize the sharing of their claims data. Those who do so will be able to organize, store and manage their medical records and personal health information online, download medical records and prescription history from other connected providers, such as retail pharmacies, laboratories and doctors' offices. The service also will provide information about possible drug-to-drug interactions.

Google Health already has teamed with the Cleveland Clinic, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Walgreens, CVS/CareMark and others.

More than 90 million Americans currently can access these records through their insurers, according to America's Health Insurance Plans. But according to a 2005 survey by market research and advisory services company Health Industry Insights, 82% of consumers said they were "uncertain" about when they would use a PHR, with only 3% indicating they would use it in the next one to six months (Best's Review, April 2008).

Personal health records differ from electronic medical records in that they're used by individual consumers who control use of the data and designate who has access to it. Electronic health records, on the other hand, are used by providers and contain detailed clinical information about patients.

(By Fran Matso Lysiak, senior associate editor, BestWeek: fran.lysiak@ambest.com)

Related terms: clinic, clinical, consumer, doctors, health, insurance, israel, market, massachusetts, medical, nasdaq, nonprofit, online, partnership, pilot program, research, retail, software