Personal health records online

We have written about this topic before here. This now from Manhattan Research:

Consumer demand for accessing personal health records (PHR) online is now at more than 70 million Americans, according to Cybercitizen Health™ v8.0, the latest consumer study and strategic advisory service from pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research. Despite significant interest in this type of service, only 7 million U.S. adults actually use PHRs.

Compelling offerings from vendors ranging from Google, WebMD, and Microsoft to multiple insurers and employers have sparked buzz around PHR in the past year. But for average consumers not motivated by a serious illness, significant barriers such as privacy concerns, lack of understanding, and doubts to PHR efficiency hinder adoption.

“Despite the rapidly increasing supply of PHR platforms, consumer adoption of PHRs is unlikely to show significant growth in the absence of major physician participation,” said Erika S. Fishman, Director of Research at Manhattan Research. “Education and awareness building will be critical in establishing the need for a PHR in the mind of American consumers. In a time when our country has not made health IT and electronic medical records a priority, it is understandable why consumers may not see the value in putting in the effort to keep a PHR on their own, unless they are highly motivated to do so because of an illness.”

Filed under: Information, Innovation , Consumer, Health, Online, Tools

Urban Surprise: More Bicyclists Means Fewer Accidents

In a study that at first glance seems counterintuitive, researchers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, reviewed safety studies from 17 countries and 68 cities in California and found that the more people bike in a community, the less they collide with motorists.

“It appears that motorists adjust their behavior in the presence of increasing numbers of people bicycling because they expect or experience more people cycling,” said Julie Hatfield, an injury expert from the university.

With fewer accidents, people perceive cycling as safer, so more people cycle, thus making it even safer, she said.

“Rising cycling rates mean motorists are more likely to be cyclists, and therefore be more conscious of, and sympathetic towards, cyclists,” she said.

Safety experts said the decrease in accidents that comes with an increase in cycling is independent of improvements in cycling-friendly laws and better infrastructure such as bike paths. The safety studies reviewed were from Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, 14 other European countries, and 68 cities in California.

Although the review focused on bicycling, it appears that the more is safer rule also applies to pedestrians, Hatfield said. [livescience]

Filed under: Market Research, Science , Bike, Health, Research, Science, Traffic

Correcting the Personal Data Imbalance

Google launched Google Health today, and we think this is another significant datapoint in an interesting trend.  Essentially, Google Health lets you import your health records (both by populating a database and by scanning extant records) then allows you to manipulate your data to research conditions or hospitals as well as track drug interactions and dosing regimens.  The potental value is huge - individuals could control the content and portability of their own medical records.  This service isn’t exactly groundbreaking; Intel, Microsoft, GE Health, have their own Patient Health Record (PHR) systems, and a host of other firms like CapMed, Medkey and WebMD have similar systems.  What makes this different is that Google is doing it.

However you feel about Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, people already trust Google with heaps of their personal data, and most people understand that Google retains and repurposes their personal data.  People trust Google in a way they do not trust other companies.  Perhaps this is because Google seems genuinely interested in offering services, mostly for free, that actually make people’s lives easier.  It is at this intersection between trust and functionality where things get interesting, and where we see a trend in consumer behavior that could affect how market researchers do their job.

Although consumers seemed inured to ubiquitous data collection, medical records light up a  emotional warning beacon brighter than other types of personal data.  So, if Google Health succeeds, it will further demonstrate consumers’ increasing desire to control their personal data in order to get something back from corporations hungry for that data.  There is a serious imbalance between what companies know about consumers versus how consumers can leverage their own data to their own benefit.  The imbalance is caused by the cost associated with collecting the vast amounts of data companies need to make business decisions.  If consumers could offer companies that data themselves, on an ad hoc basis, would companies still need to pay giant aggregators for that data?  The need to interpret the data will never disappear, but how companies acquire that data and the value they have to offer in exchange for it may change.

Filed under: Information , Consumer, Health, Science