White House Makes Official Introduction of the “Blue Button”–Microsoft Demonstrates HealthVault Integration And Sharing

If you check in here once in a while you know there’s quite a bit about personal health records and HealthVault. I’m sure the video may be uploaded to YouTube soon so in the meantime I took a few screenshots of the highlights. First off by using the Blue Button the information goes to HealthVault and secondly shown here is the Surgeon General’s My Family Health Record to where the information from HealthVault is uploaded so it shows how the data can be moved with HealthVault being the vehicle.

A sample of some of the popular applications that work with HealthVault are shown in the next image. Of course there are many and one is not going to use every application or you might working all day with your information <grin> but rather you can choose what is useful and has value for your. The demo family uses an example of a soldier who has returned from overseas service and the family getting all their health records together. Of course there’s always a link at the Medical Quack to find HealthVault under the right hand side under resources. Also, you can do a search or look at the PHR section and there’s many more additional posts.

VA Can Now Use the “Blue Button” to Download Their Data from Their PHR (Personal Health Record)

One of the most useful applications which I also have a link on the Medical Quack for is Trialx, which uses HealthVault to find a specific clinical trial you could be qualified for. TrialX has done a few things with their site and the widget on the blog here allows you to do a quick look up for a clinical trial without a HealthVault account but after you see the results it’s easy to see why having a PHR makes it easier as there’s more data to match and the searches are refined.

The VA had the first shot at giving this a try through the month of September. You can read more at the Blue Button Initiative at the CMS Website.

Also on the Medical Quack there’s always a ink to Healthcare.Gov where you can find information on health insurance and more. The link below tells the story on how the site came into being and in a rather short time frame too. BD

The Story Behind The Building of Healthcare. Gov - 90 Day Creation, Help From Twitter and the Silicon Valley Made It Possible

The Obama administration's White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has formerly unveiled a Web tool that will enable seniors and veterans to download their PHRs (personal health records) to a PC or storage device and maintain control over information sharing with health care providers, according to a White House blog post.

At a meeting of health care industry executives, venture capitalists, corporate executives, and government officials on Oct. 7 in San Francisco called DC to VC: Investing in Healthcare IT Summit, Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. CTO and associate director for technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, discussed the Blue Button tool. President Obama first introduced the Blue Button in August.