The Yabuts of Sharing Data Between Google Health and HealthVault

“What’s a yabut?” you ask.

Yabut is a term coined by my esteemed colleague, the late Paul Fetrow.  It stands for “Yeah….but….”

Yabuts are the gotchas, the fine print, the details that affect the terms of any agreement.  For example, the telecom companies will tell you its easy to switch carriers now that we have number portability.  Yeah…but it will cost you $175 for an early termination fee.

Yesterday’s post ended with the optimistic observation that Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault have agreed in principle that the platforms will be open and interoperable. (Presumably) you’ll be able to either 1) move all your data from Google Health to HealthVault, or vice versa, and 2) be able to transfer data across networks, e.g., your doctor has signed up with HealthVault and the lab belongs to Google Health, but because the platforms are open and interoperable data will pass across the network and your doctor will get lab results seamlessly.

Again, the analogy here is the telephone network — where you know that you can pick up the phone and call anyone in the world, regardless of the technical networks required to pass your voice.

What are some of the yabuts to Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault exchanging data? In this case yabuts refers to customer lock-in tactics and switching costs that might be imposed.

First, we need to get beyond principles.  It’s nice to say they’ll exchange data…let’s see it happen.

Then, let’s see the details:

Yes, we’ll transfer your health information but it will cost you $200 for a termination fee.

Yes, you can switch and here’s the manual with the 437 steps you’ll need to go through to make it happen.  Of course, you can always ask for help from your nephew with the Ph.D in Computer Science.

Yes, we’ll transfer your data but it will take 6 weeks….  You have a brain tumor? …let me see if I can get that down to 5 weeks.

Yes, we’ll transfer your data but it will cost you $$ per kilobyte.  Just imagine it like being at a fancy hotel and needing to make a long-distance call.

I’m sure you can use your imagination to come up with other examples of yabuts. The ideal outcome is that it will be frictionless (easy) and cost free to transfer data between Google Health and HealthVault.

The fewer yabuts the better.