RxInformatics.com

By Jacob Goldstein

Adam Bosworth, the guy who used to be Google’s VP of engineering and point man on health stuff, has his own company now — a health site called Keas.

The basic idea is straightforward: Plug in your health data, and get a plan to stay healthy. As your health changes, the plan changes. A profile of the company lands in this morning’s New York Times, which notes that the startup has some big-name partners: Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and the big lab company Quest Diagnostics.

Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault aim to be personal health records, digital repositories of people’s health info. “But I decided my focus should be on the other side of the equation — what to do with the data,” Bosworth told the NYT.

Of course, plenty of other people are trying to figure out how to do this sort of thing. As the WSJ’s Kara Swisher noted last week Microsoft just launched “My Health Info,” which is supposed to work with HealthVault to allow people to do research, get guidance and monitor their health.

The ship still hasn’t really come in for this stuff — how many people do you know who store their health information in a personal online system? But that could change with the big push to get doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic records in the next few years. Entering your health data from your doctor’s paper records is a hassle, but — if everything goes according to plan — it could be much easier to move data from the doctor’s electronic files to your personal health record.

Image: iStockphoto

The time has come for widespread use of personal health records (PHR). However, the question remains how they will best be dispensed within the U.S. marketplace: web application? an extension of EHR at the healthsystem you receive care at? desktop application? widget? These are certainly interesting and exciting times for informatics.