'Personal' health websites sought
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People searching for online health advice prefer sites with "a human touch", a study suggests.
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(InfoWorld) - Two large health insurance trade groups based in the U.S. have released a model for personal health records, a portable, Web-based tool that includes a customer's insurance claims, immunization records, medication records and other health information. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, whose members provide health insurance to about two thirds of U.S. residents, unveiled the personal health record model Wednesday. The two groups saw the importance of working together on the project, said Susan Pisano, vice president of communications for AHIP. "This is really an effort that cries out for collaboration," she said. U.S. President George Bush has pushed for electronic health records to be available to all U.S. residents by 2014. Backers of such records say they will improve the efficiency of the U.S. health-care system and cut down on errors such as drug interaction problems. Personal health records, or PHRs, "may be one of our most important contributions to helping improve health care," Ronald Williams chairman, chief executive and president of insurer Aetna Inc., said in a statement. PHRs are similar to other electronic health records, although they include less specific treatment information. Electronic health records typically are used by health-care providers to store and manage detailed clinical information. Patients will be able to enter information into their PHRs, in addition to information from pharmacies, laboratories and medical providers, the groups said. The model released Wednesday includes definitions of data elements that should be included in PHRs, such as risk factors, family history, health-care facilities and medications taken. The model also includes standards for the PHRs to be portable between insurers and providers, and rules about when insurers can share the information. Insurers can send the information to a new insurer only after the patient gives consent and has enrolled in the new insurance plan, Pisano said. Those tight sharing rules were designed to address concerns about the PHRs used by insurance underwriters, she said. The PHR model also set 2008 as the deadline for insurers to incorporate the data elements and adopt the portability standards, she added. The groups said the U.S. is still "many years" away from a fully interoperable health records system. But Dr. Robert Kolodner, interim national coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, praised the groups' efforts. The new model is a "step forward in the national health IT agenda," he said in a statement. Earlier this month, five major corporations -- Applied Materials Inc., British Petroleum America Inc., Intel Corp., Pitney Bowes Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- announced plans to fund the development of a Web-based system that would allow their employees and retirees to access and maintain personal medical records. The companies said the plan could help them cut health-care costs.
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Surfing the Internet is often cited as a cause of sedentary living. But what if the Web could be transformed into a tool to help boost physical activity?
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People with chronic disease should think twice before relying on the internet for health advice, research suggests.
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Could this be an end to broken links? New software replaces and updates links on Web pages.
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Parents who lost a son to cancer have built a website using their own funds to help other patients make sense of complicated treatment information. By Kristen Philipkoski.
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Although it has been a long time coming, physicians are beginning to consider the Internet an integral part of their practice. For example, instantaneous
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Some people with chronic health problems who seek online advice would be better off just listening to their doctors, new research suggests.
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Five major US corporations have joined forces to create a "medical Internet" on which some 2.5 million workers can bring together their personal health records in one secure location, providing access to everything from prescriptions and cholesterol readings to medical histories.
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Uninsured Washington area residents shopping for health coverage -- or convinced they have to go without -- have a new tool to help them assess the options available to them. A Web site first developed for California by the nonprofit Foundation for Health Coverage Education now includes informati...
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With health officials now urging Americans to dig into their family health history, experts advise taking advantage of free Internet tools -- and upcoming holiday gatherings -- to get started on the project.
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There's a lot of talk these days about healthy food, but it's not always what we're looking for on the Internet
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Browsing medical sites on the Internet can bring on a condition dubbed &quot;cyberchondria&quot;, in which patients diagnose themselves incorrectly and seek treatment they do not need, a British study said.
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Before me lies the patient, a Gateway computer running Windows 98. It is suffering from extremely clogged Internet arteries, unable to reach the Web. As one of The Washington Post's digital doctors, my task is to nurse the machine back to health so my colleague Kathleen Day can access her e-mail and file stories from home.
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TUESDAY, Dec. 28 (HealthDayNews) -- There's a new U.S. government Web site to provide seniors with information about the safe use of medicines.
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NHS patients are to be offered a fitness and diet plan to improve national health, according to a newspaper.
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By Julie Deardorff  Increasing numbers of us are Googling our own weird headaches, rashes and unexplained symptoms before heading to the doctor.  And although physicians are secretly Googling difficult medical situations, many aren't thrilled that we're doing the same thing.