This morning’s newscast of Morning Edition on National Public Radio (NPR) had a brief story (~ 4min, you can listen to it here) on the growing use of IT in a medical practice. The story quickly focuses in on the potential of Personal Health Records (PHRs) with interview comments from a doctor on how useful he would find PHRs for providing more complete and accurate care for his patients. Mentions are made of Google’s planned PHR and Microsoft HealthVault’s own software architect, Sean Nolan gets a few sound bites in. Unfortunately, the reporter fails to differentiate HealthVault, as it is NOT a PHR, but a personal health platform (PHP) from PHRs, which this story focuses on. Probably would have made the story to complex to attempt that separation.
Story closes with a brief discussion on the issue of privacy, something I’ve commented on in the past. This is a HUGE issue for the PHR market and one that has been poorly addressed to date by legislators and the vast majority of PHR vendors in the market today.
Good to see a major news organization such as NPR pick-up on this story. Maybe in the near future we’ll get a special edition of Frontline to delve deeper into healthcare IT issues as four minutes barely scratches the surface.
