Kaiser Permanente Signs Up Employees for Microsoft’s Online Health Record Service

Nonprofit health insurer Kaiser Permanente announced this week that its 159,000 employees would be the first employees to participate in Microsoft’s online health record, Healthvault.

Healthvault, which launched in October, built its online health record so that companies could easily integrate it with other software that is currently used to store medical records.

Kaiser, which made the announcement Monday, June 9, will allow employees to transfer prescription information, test results and other health data from the company’s own online personal health record, My Health Manager, to Microsoft’s Health Vault.

If the pilot program for employees is successful, Kaiser said it will make the service available to its 8 million members nationwide, according to news reports.

The announcement came a month after Google announced the launch of a similar site, Google Health. Other employers, most notably the employer group Dossia, have been busy designing similar Web sites that securely store online medical records.

Dossia, an employer coalition led by Wal-Mart, Intel, Pitney Bowes, BP and Applied Materials, relaunched its efforts last fall after switching technology developers for the creation of a personal electronic health record for employees of member companies.