We are beginning to see States step up to the plate and begin sponsoring PHRs. A couple of weeks ago the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog reported (great comments there BTW) that the governor of Minnesota (and possibly even the republican VP nominee) will roll-out a PHR to state employees first and later to citizens. A more complete article on the subject was published today.

California is also getting in on the act with the sponsorship of the PHR MiVia for some 5,000 migrant farm workers. This is more of an extension as MiVia, has been in use for a couple of years now in California to serve migrant workers and more recently in the Pacific Northwest and upstate New York as well. MiVia was developed by one of the early PHR pioneers, FollowMe (who was profiled in our PHR Market Report).

One of the interesting aspects of the MiVa PHR platform is that though access is controlled by the consumer (migrant worker in this case) clinicians working in the mobile clinics serving these migrants have found MiVia to be far easier to use and just as effective as their cumbersome EMR. This may be why some individuals in other sectors of the HIT industry fear this technology and frequently discount it.