The online personal health records sites are exploding like popcorn in a hot kettle on the stove. (Don’t mind me. I dream about popcorn on a daily basis and could make popcorn analogies all day). First there were sites like WebMD, designed to help people check their symptoms, ask questions and read up-to-date journalistic health care information. Then came sites like Microsoft’s HealthVault and Google Health. These were more oriented toward patients being able to upload their personal health information in order to organize, set goals and make decisions.
Blasting onto this relatively new scene, and causing a stir, is a health insurance provider, UnitedHealth. They have created a site entitled myOptumHealth that looks to do a stellar job of combining the best of both worlds: enabling patients to upload and manage their own personal health data while getting up to date information on diseases, symptoms and general healthy living.
Who is UnitedHealth Really Competing With?
It may be tough to tell at first glance just who UnitedHealth’s competitors are in this space. Google and Microsoft certainly have good models created for managing of online health data, but they don’t have the extensive type of broad health information that sites like WebMD feature. myOptumHealth seems to cater well to both of these options, and blows other health insurance carriers out of the water.
Unlike companies like Aetna and WellPoint, who already offer digital health record keeping on their websites, UnitedHealth has opened its doors to everyone. Aetna and WellPoint only offer services to health-plan member and large corporate clients. UnitedHealth is playing it smart by allowing any old average Joe to utilize their service, because once you are online with them you will no doubt be receiving offers for their health insurance plan services. The plan is to offer medical, dental and vision insurance through the site. Smart thinking for those consumers have been undecided about their health insurance provider until now.
What About Consumer Health Privacy?
One huge concern critics have with the online, “open” forum of online digital health records is that of consumers’ privacy. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, a federal law, provides minimum national privacy and security standards for personal medical information. The rules, however, apply only to ‘covered entities’ – health-care providers, health insurers and companies that administer health plans – rather than to the medical record itself. Unless the personal health records vendor is considered a ‘covered entity,’ HIPAA doesn’t apply.”
If you are smart, red flags should be waving at you from every angle. If you are like me, you are very protective of your personal health information. I will post updates about my life on sites like Facebook and Twitter, but those can only be seen by people I know (at my choosing) and it’s usually frivolous things like what I had for dinner last night or how many cups of coffee it took to wake up this morning. I don’t want things like my health records being privy to the entire world’s prying eyes. I value what little privacy there can be found on the Internet, and if my information isn’t going to be protected, I’m probably not going to put it out there.
Is This Really the Best Solution?
I’ll be the first to admit: I’m a nerd. The fact that I no longer have unlimited Internet access at work makes me want to cry, I want to be around my computer all the time, and I think little technology advances are pretty darn cool. That said, I’m not sure that online health management is the way to go. These sites are designed to make it easier for patients to keep track of their health records as they hop from doctor to doctor, medication to mediation, even health care provider to health care provider. But is that the best way to do things? In my humble (and admittedly liberal) opinion, no.
A universal health care system in which patients could pick their physician and dare I say, stick with them for years, would be a much more efficient tracking system. Patients wouldn’t have to be continuously re-explaining their health ailments to different doctors, and they wouldn’t have to worry about losing their health insurance coverage and having to transfer all their history elsewhere. If there was less jugging of patients and their health going on in the system we have today, we wouldn’t have the need for fancy online solutions like this. I’m not saying that using these tools isn’t a good idea-I think that they are pretty neat. I’m merely suggesting that the future of health care shouldn’t evolve toward this kind of management as an end all be all.
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