Personal Health Information Networks

Personal Health Information Networks (PHIN) are the latest trend in the field of Electronic Health Records (EHR).

The concept itself is really simple: given that aligning all the interested parties in the healthcare process to come up with solid standard-based and portable electronic health records is going to take too long (see this and this), why not make it easier by skipping all those agents and having the patient be the manager of the system?

This idea is what underpins the development of several importan projects in the healthcare information sector. Big players from the technology sector (and I mean very big) are scrambling to get their systems ready:

• Google Health, from Google Inc.
• HealthVault, from Miscrosoft Corp.
• Dossia, from Intel, WalMart and AT&T.

All of them share several important features like patient-controlled information submittal and retrieval, healthcare-provider search, health advice and information, etc.

I recommend this analysis of current and future efforts in PHINs by Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe.

Google Health is coming

We already knew that Google has partnered with the Cleveland Clinic to pilot their electronic health record platform. Now Google's chairman has presented their EHR system at the HIMSS08 conference. The official Google blog provides a few details about the product and a couple of (lame) screenshots. Ironically, the people at Techcrunch are not amused with this, er, gradual approach to the actual launch of a product. Sour grapes, anyone?

When offered for universal use, I'm afraid the direct impact of this product in the Spanish market is going to be close to zero. It can't be otherwise: Google's EHR is going to be HIPAA-compliant, but will not be in compliance with Spanish personal data protection rules. And I don't think Google will take the effort to do it.