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A First Comparison of Google Health and MS HealthVault

While details are thin, here’s a first pass at comparing and contrasting Google Health (GH) and Microsoft HealthVault (HV).  Overall, there are many common features, some differences, and many common challenges between these two platforms. 

A High Level Comparison

Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault Personal Health Information (PHI) Platforms

There’s still not much information available about the specifics of GH, although they did release sketchy information on the Official Google Blog.  I’ll comment on a few of the particulars.

Commonalities

Both are patient controlled — data is released only with patient permission. 

Both GH and HV make claims of data portability.  This is in contrast to the “tethered” model of many personal health records (PHRs) being offered today by employers, health plans, and care providers; in a tethered model, PHI is not portable — if you leave a health plan or employer, or if you get care outside the provider’s system — your data does not follow you.

Both have adopted broad technical standards to facilitate interoperabilty of PHI (e.g., the HL7 CDA Continuity of Care Document and the ASTM Continuity of Care Record). Thus, it should be possible to exchange your PHI between GH and HV, and among other parties that have adopted similar standards.  When? can I move all my PHI? will data exchange be easy or require 32 steps? — these questions can’t be answered yet.

Thus, the market for PHI should look much more like the market for fax machines than the market for high definition DVD players. Fax machines of different brands can exchange information — but they compete on features, price, ease of use, etc.  At this point I don’t foresee a standards battle-to-the-death such as the one that occurred between Sony Blu-ray and Toshiba HD DVD.

GH and HV also will compete on many other levels — applications, 3rd party complementors, user friendliness, etc.

HOWEVER, While GH and HV will compete, at this stage of evolution they are should be far more collaborative than competitive.  Using Clay Christensen’s terminology, the primary competition is non-consumption — people will need to learn about why their PHI is important and how to use a PHR. 

The common goal for both GH and HV is to build the size of the network for PHI.  The total value of the network is dependent on reaching a tipping point and creating a network effect; the value of the network grows exponentially based on the number of users, thus growing the overall size of the market is a win-win.

Both are platforms.  Platform models and platform strategy are almost unheard of in health care, but there’s extensive experience from other industries.  See e.g., The Elements of Platform Leadership, MITSloan Management Review, Spring 2002 or Platform Networks—Core Concepts, MIT Center for Digital Business, June 2007 (warning: not easy reads, but very helpful to understand platforms).

Both GH’s and HV’s long-term revenue model is unclear.  Neither Google nor MS have been very specific about their long-term plans for monetizing their offerings.  I think this is smart as it’s very early and we don’t know what will and won’t work; they have many options.  Both seem to recognize that there is tremendous value to be created in this type of collaborative network, yet both seem unclear about the best ways to do so.

Finally, both GH and HV appear to be extremely sensitive to privacy/security issues. Both claim that they will not use PHI to create targeted ads, but there are many disbelievers  Here’s a cynical but representative comment from the TechCrunch blog:

“Your search for cra sincaunre yielded 0 results. Since we can see from your medical records that you have dyslexia, perhaps you meant _car insurance_?”

Some Differences

Out of the box, GH is a PHI platform and a PHR. HV is a PHI platform, not a PHR.  (had enough initials?)

GH seems much more B2C focused.  HV seems more focused on developing B2B partnerships with their 3rd party complementors taking on the responsibility of developing applications and signing up users.

Thus, HV seems more dependent on its complementors for ultimate success.  If the partners build good applications and attract a lot of patients, HV can flourish. If the partners sit on their hands, HV might have to rethink whether it wants to build and market more applications on its own. While GH also will allow 3rd party complementors to build applications, GH seems more inclined also to build apps on its own.  Details here are particularly thin, so watch this over time.

GH seems more intent to develop mechanisms to automate gathering and updating of PHI from other parties in the health care system — hospitals, doctors, health plans, labs, etc.  While there is nothing to preclude HV from doing similarly in the future, I believe MS will have have more channel conflict issues because MS already does substantial business with health care organizations.  GH will probably be less concerned about using more strong-armed tactics to obtain data on patients’ behalf.  Again, the HV model seems to pass this responsibility on to complementors for now. 

Some Common Challenges

Gaining consumer trust — avoiding a fatal mistake of a PR disaster through a security breach or violation of confidentiality (real or perceived)

Using carrots and/or sticks in working with complementors?

Using carrots and/or sticks in trying to extract data from health care incumbents?

Growing the overall size of the network. 

Adding useful applications, whether from GH or HV themselves, or with 3rd party complementors. 

Bottom line: more similarities than differences.  It’s early. The platforms are flexible and will evolve…stay tuned.

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13 Comments

  1. John on March 4, 2008 at 9:36 am

    Hi Vince,
    Pretty decent job here sizing up these two major healthcare initiatives. An important point to bring to the forefront is the over-riding trend to bring consumerism to the healthcare sector, which both MS and Google are intending to do. In my conversations with both firms, they have been equally adamant in stating that this is going to take a lot of effort and time and are in it for the long-haul. Will just have to wait and see how all this plays out.

    Which leads to the next question: OK, so we have Google and MS with their platforms, so what is Dossia’s role in all of this and for that matter, with all the partnerships being announced, where are the HIEs and RHIOs in these announcements?

    Maybe I can address that one over on my site. Will put up a brief post mentioning this one today.



  2. Vince Kuraitis on March 4, 2008 at 10:51 am

    John,
    YES, this is about bringing consumerism to health care, and YES, Dossia/HIEs/RHIOs and others will play a part in this new network and ecosystem (more on this soon on from my end as well).
    No one has this all figured out yet, and the blogosphere can help speed up the collective learning process. Let’s keep at it.



  3. Paul S on March 6, 2008 at 10:04 pm

    So is this concept “live”? I saw a company, My Medical Records, at HIMSS. For 9.95 a month they will track my medical records, my familys records, my car registration, pictures of items in my home, and the last time Fido had a case of Ringworm. Is this what Google and MS are up to? I would love to use it so I could transport my own medical condition across state lines by giving a Doc a website and access code to see all of the info that they charge me 5-15 dollars to get a copy of…
    What can I use now?



  4. Shannon Daly on March 10, 2008 at 11:03 am

    So here’s a product that mixes the best of all worlds. The EMRy Stick is a portable PHR flashdrive that patients carry with them therefore alleviating the HIPAA issue. It is the only product that I could find which has the capability of tying in all EMR systems so the medical records can be updated automatically. Currently it is configured for MYSIS, and is working on Centricity. As they configure more and more systems, patients will then be able to go to their Doctors and have accurate information uploaded automatically saving the Doctors and Patients time which ultimately means money.



  5. estetik on March 21, 2008 at 1:31 am

    Google and MS health vault seems to be very similar in terms of several issues. I think this is again a war about ads. Ads means money which is very important. In my opinion money should stand in the second row, trust of information should stand in the first row.



  6. Kevin Magee on April 22, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    This is a great post and I’ve passed the link on to a number of my customers and colleagues who have been asking me about both the Google and Microsoft offerings in this space, what the major differences are and where they are headed.



  7. medical answering service on September 29, 2008 at 5:24 pm

    great side by side comparison. it will be interesting to see how this plays out. It’s kind of exciting in a way.

    The crucial thing is “Both are patient controlled — data is released only with patient permission. ” Now that thats out of the way we can look at other concerns. Privacy concerns will always be there but this is a fine start.



  8. social media monitoring on October 9, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    I think I’d still be concerned about privacy issues using either system



  9. Medical Answering Service on October 31, 2008 at 5:51 am

    I think the issue is also privacy and what company has more potential to develop new products and services in the long run. Obviously, you already show us that it seems that once again, Google is the clear winner.



  10. Trevor Weir the marketing guy on November 18, 2008 at 10:12 am

    Marketing is what I do, but like the poster above I also agree that marketing should not come before patient privacy issues.

    Being able to have portable patient care records is a major plus. In other places that I lived like Canada and england, socialized medicine has centralized some information but not a whole lot.

    From one doctor to the next, they are frequently still insisting that you back under the darn x-ray machine to take a picture of something you know has been done thrice in the past few days/weeks/months ( take your pick )

    Insurance companies can use a lot of this type of information to raise one’s premiums. Privacy issues were mentioned above, but what happens when they get involved?



  11. Dino on November 25, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    I agree with that HV and GH should be doing this as a collaborative effort instead of a competitive one, this way they could share helpful information with one another , and this can be beneficial for both of them, they could better service their members/clients and in turn their satisfaction ratings would go up and they can propagate even further.

    From what I see they seem to have more similarities that differences so they could interact easily , true that they may end up giving up some vital info to the other side but I think the benefits they will gain through cooperation outweighs that deficit,



  12. Medical Staffing Software on December 25, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    OK, so when is the limit regarding medical privacy and the use of software? I simply can’t tell because at the end of the day, behind all these companies the money factor and the politics is a big issue, we should be alert to this type of issues and keep our eyes open for the future development of this “online” medical applications/services.



  13. Barrie C Fitz-Gerald on February 14, 2010 at 12:29 pm

    A First Comparison of Google Health and MS HealthVault | e-CareManagement http://bit.ly/3wBlIs