Robert Wood Johnson Project HealthDesign

The Robert Wood Johnson Project HealthDesign has finally posted the materials created by the grant recipients online. One of the novel concepts behind this grant was that everything produced would be released as open source.  As an advocate and contributor of open source software, this was an intriguing concept.  Estenda participated in one of the projects and the material is now available on-line at their site.

A new PHR from Mayo Clinic

I just saw a news article about the new Mayo Clinic PHR.

It appears to be connected with Microsoft HealthVault. What does this mean for the industry? I think a couple things. First, we are starting to see the creation of multiple PHRs that have strong brand recognition. This is good and bad. Good because more competition equals innovation. Bad because where is your data stored? As a developer of applications that are designed to connect to a PHR to access patient data, which sites do I integrate with?  Hopefully, we don’t have to answer that question and the prominent PHRs will be consistent with interfaces and be interoperable.   Fortunately, it appears Microsoft and Google are still the key players and others are playing nice with them.  

Does the Mayo Clinic have an advantage over Google and Microsoft in terms of the PHR? Mayo Clinic definitely has the edge in terms of a medical brand, but the others have the edge when it comes to technology. Which matters to you?