Friday, June 13, 2008

Personal health-care knowledge

How do you go about managing your personal knowledge as it relates to your health?  Tough, isn't it.  You know what ailments you have or have had but how do you easily articulate that to your physician.  How can you really be an informed consumer of health care services when you need to share your health history with medical professionals but you don't have that information at your finger tips?

There's a push amongst Google, Microsoft and others to help us manage our personal health information.  The problem is that much of the information we need is locked up inside huge data stores within health insurance companies and in paper files at multiple health care providers.

Google just announced that Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield will make available each members claims data for inclusion in a personal Google Health Account.  This is to my knowledge the first health insurance company to do this.  The hole in the dam has opened....

Internet technology is changing ever more rapidly, potentially even surpassing Moore’s Law.   Consumers are expecting an exponential increase in the availability of technology-based services, even from health-care organizations.   It is only a matter of time before health care consumers will demand expect electronic access to all the information related to their personal health history.  I believe that this will become a deciding factor as to what insurance company gets a persons business and loyalty in the not to distant future.

Knowledge to do what?

Can your organization answer the question; knowledge to do what?  That should be the starting point for any organization embarking on a new ...