Big industrial conglomerates increasingly are finding healthcare an enticing opportunity for expansion.

And the software conglomerate known as Microsoft (Redmond, Washington) is following that lead. It has entered the personal health record (PHR) arena with last week’s launch of HealthVault, touting the move as implementation of its “consumer health vision.”

The goal, the company said last week during an orchestrated campaign — including an op-ed on healthcare and technology by Chairman Bill Gates in the Wall Street Journal — is to “bring the health and technology industries together to create new applications, services and connected devices that help people manage and monitor their personal health information ...”

“People are concerned to find themselves at the center of the healthcare ecosystem today because they must navigate a complex web of disconnected interactions between providers, hospitals, insurance companies and even government agencies,” said Peter Neupert, corporate VP of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft. “... The launch of HealthVault makes it possible for people to collect their private health information on their terms and for companies across the health industry to deliver compatible tools and services built on the HealthVault.”

Microsoft said HealthVault was created in cooperation with leading privacy advocates, security experts, as well as “dozens” of other healthcare technology companies.

“Microsoft is the first major technology company to engage with the bipartisan Coalition for Patient Privacy in a serious way,” said Dr. Deborah Peel, founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, especially noting that HealthVault prohibits “onward transfer” of data without “explicit” informed consent. This means, she said, that patients’ health information will not be “data-mined, because they alone control it.”

The company also has committed to independent third-party audits.

By seeming to put control of healthcare records squarely in the hands of consumers/patients, it thereby provides an alternative to managing information — and if all goes accordingly, their personal health — without sacrificing privacy or giving information over to a governmental body, a frequently expressed fear concerning the U.S. government drive to develop an electronic health record.

That option raises a variety of concerns: the data-loaded laptop all-too-easily taken home and then stolen and the general fear of putting this information into the hands of the government.

Several groups have been working for years on creating a secure but portable EMR, with no observable success.

The federal government’s efforts have been tied to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. After the initial tenure of David Brailer, the HHS named a permanent coordinator, Robert Kolodner, MD, to head the office in April, after serving as interim coordinator since September 2006.

In the WSJ op-ed, Gates said, “I believe that an Internet-based healthcare network like this will have a dramatic impact. It will undoubtedly improve the quality of medical care and lower costs by encouraging the use of evidence-based medicine, reducing medical errors and eliminating redundant medical tests.”

However, he wrote that “no one company can — or should — hope to provide the single solution to make all of this possible.”

For that reason, Gates emphasized the importance of partnerships, saying that Microsoft is working with a “wide range of software and hardware companies, as well as with physicians, hospitals, government organizations, patient advocacy groups and consumers...”

Among the patient advocacy groups that have signed on to the project are the American Heart Association (Dallas) and the American Lung Association (New York).

Interestingly, the day following Microsoft’s announcement of its HealthVault service, Michael Leavitt, HHS Secretary, reported contracts to nine health information exchanges (HIEs), totaling $22.5 million, to begin trial implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).

HHS said that the contracts will create a “secure foundation” for basic health information exchange between “select” HIE, with more complex functions developed over time.

“This work will advance the nation toward the President’s goal of most Americans having access to secure electronic health records by 2014 ...” the HHS said.

In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta) is expected to unveil contract awards that will “complement” the contract work reported by HHS.

“This joint work will ensure that health information exchanges using the NHIN infrastructure can support the community-based activities of public health agencies,” HHS said.

HHS said that interim results of the NHIN will be shared through three public forums and other public demonstrations of real-time information at the end of the first contract year, which will be in September 2008.

Ultimately, the infrastructure being created will be placed in the public domain, the agency said.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS; Chicago), representing many technology companies working toward electronic healthcare records, only included a short news brief regarding the HealthVault initiative on its web site.

Stephen Downs, senior program officer and deputy director, Health Group, for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Princeton, New Jersey), offered his thoughts concerning HealthVault, calling it “encouraging that companies like Microsoft, Google and other IT leaders plan to develop personal health record products and systems that people can use to manage their health information securely, and we hope more companies will follow suit.”

He added: “Having ready access to your own health information – instead of having your medical history stored in paper form in a doctor’s office where you can’t see it — is a vital step in helping physicians and patients work together to improve care.”

However, Downs noted that PHRs “must be more than online repositories of our medical records.” He said there must be a parallel trend in which individuals take greater responsibility for managing their health — something healthcare commentators such as former Republican House leader Newt Gingrich have frequently emphasized.