PHR buzz

I read yesterday the attached article about the acqusition of the collaborative care management services vendor- MEDecision by Health insurer - Health care srvice corporation for $121M in cash.

It seems from the positive aspect that Google and Microsoft penetration to this market is causing a buzz - creative one.
Potential buyers, developers, IT solution providers companies,Medical professionals and consumers are getting more and more interested about this subject and enjoy the fruits of this prosperity.This growing interesting is having financial influence

From the strategic aspect, as I wrote above, this is a good atmosphere for all the competitors but later on some of them surely will pay the price of the "Big lions penetration/involvement".

Microsoft and Google involvement on health 2.0 - Privacy concerns

Yesterday NY Times published a review about an article which was written recently on New England Journal of Medicine

The issue : Privacy concerns regarding MS and google's PHR web based projects .

Some of the concerns are well known and based by strong evidence and theories (ofcourse you can read them on the attached link to the article or in the original review on New England) but still everyone should remember several points as well :

1. Its time that the health sector and consumers will earn and get benefits from the highly speed emerging technology on the web.

2. Privacy is a major an important issue but we should not prevent progressing by adopting technology on behalf of being "privacy guards".

3. Strong power and influence by several major companies on tremendous highly valuble health data is maybe not the optimal situation but the involvement of this two giants in the health sector is going to bring prosperity to the health 2.0 world and eventually to the "general" and traditional health sector. More powefull health sector means better services for the public .

I will be more than pleased to hear and listen to my collegues thoughts and ideas regarding this issue