HealthVault is a Microsoft on-line tool and mobile application intended for personal organization, storage, and sharing of health information. It is an attempt to digitize your personal information for best interaction with most of the healthcare industry’s emergence of robust electronic medical records (EMR). Healthcare providers are being “transitioned” to EMR by government “incentive”.

HealthVault’s goal is to have exportable, centralized, reliable health information that you can provide to your healthcare providers. A further Healthvault goal is for your personal tracking and management of your health information.

HealthVault allows you to centralize and track your lab diagnostics/values from certain labs. This alone will allow your different practitioners to compare apples to apples and have historical physiological values.

HealthVault is a work in progress. I have noticed nice improvements over the last three years. HealthVault has slowly been building its healthcare partnerships to best provide health services for its users. It is not perfect, but it is a nice step forward in your personal organization and management of your healthcare information.

Storage of personal health information will be an effective method of interacting with healthcare providers who are more frequently utilizing electronic medical records.