Couple of points:
First, the whole “Consumer Watchdog” attack on Google was ill-founded. Talked to Google shortly after this announcement by the Consumer Watchdog group and needless to say, the folks in Mtn. View were a little upset. Following is the statement Google made repudiating Consumer Watchdog:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/01/consumer-watchdog-wrong-on-medical.html

Second, in the report Michael, did find most aspects misleading, at least as written, e.g. sharing records with physicians. Happy to hear that yes indeed, you know that capability is there. Also, an area that everyone seems to struggle with in this industry is how to create a service that is useful for the consumer, but can also be of value to the physician. Remains to be seen how this will sort out.

Lastly, and a point I failed to bring out in the post was how interested the participants were in the drug safety interaction checker. Quite an interesting insight.

Thank you for your feedback!

January 27, 2009
Written Testimony of
Michael Stokes
Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation?s Health Solutions Group
Before the
Senate Judiciary Committee
Hearing on Health IT: Protecting Americans’ Privacy in the Digital Age

“I think it’s also valuable to understand the perception of users who aren’t aware of any industry background. ”

Thank you for joining the conversation. And your clarifications. Agree perceptions are always the starting point in terms of security (even if it is clouded by user ignorance).

Sharing information is an absolute must – without which we will never see the real utility of PHRs. However, the controls and ownership of that shared information are also an absolute must. There are inherent deficiencies in Google Health (rooted in both their technology and business considerations) – but that is a debate for another time.

We need to move forward at a more accelerated pace to surfacing the issues around security & privacy – past the perception phase. Did not mean to sound harsh in my comments – that’s the dialogue I hope all of us can purse diligently.

The opportunity to move forward eHealth as “empowered edge participants” (via PHR, Personal Genome, etc) is a compelling one – and we must capitalize on these opportunities from the edge.

On page 5 of the white paper, there was a rather unfortunate typo in the age breakdowns. It should say “2 of the participants were aged 18-21” rather than “22.” The total number of participants in the 30-or-younger bracket was only 12, or 40% of the total sample.

Also, in our recommendation that PHRs should include the ability to share information with one’s physician, we were aware that both GHealth and HV provided this feature. We simply wanted to highlight its value since our participants found this to be one of the most appealing reasons to use a PHR.

Finally, John, I think your comment predicting a tie on security/privacy/trust was quite insightful. Although HV was more often preferred when participants were forced to choose between the two PHRs, the white paper also details how their subjective ratings for those dimensions were extremely close.

@G – the consumer watchdog info you’re presenting is definitely interesting. But I think it’s also valuable to understand the perception of users who aren’t aware of any industry background. This is what we were trying to get at — what are people’s first impressions of the security of PHRs? And overall, participants were pretty confident with both of them.

John – GREAT POINT – caveat above- – discounts by a considerable amount, the findings in this study.

I have read through the study. I love these usability experts – they loose the big picture along the way to fastclicks. I know 30 somethings like to throw up their health records on the Facebook Wall – and find out 10 years from now they have been had by FB and Google.

“HealthVault did not go home empty handed and was considered better than its Mountain View rivals on Security, Privacy and Trust by a slim margin. We found this to be unusual as we would have predicted a virtual tie as both companies have been very forthcoming on these important issues.”

Here is the User Friendly Google behind the scenes – interesting – it calls out “GOOGLE” only.

Consumer Watchdog To Google: Publicly Disclose Your Lobbying Positions On Electronic Medical Record Provisions In Stimulus Bill – link below.

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=24594

Consumer Watchdog Calls on Google to Cease Lobbying Effort to Allow Sale of Patient Medical Records; Urges Congress to Adopt Privacy Protections in Economic Stimulus Bill – the link below
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/patients/articles/?storyId=24489

Past the rhetoric of “disclosures” which anyone can indulge in – HEALTHVAULT is without question the better platform for those who will be the “real users” – the family health managers and caretakers- security and privacy stand out for them as No. 1 priority.

Let’s start these user centric evaluations over again with Security & Privacy as absolutes – and then start asking which PHR users prefer.

And good you pointed out the Project Health Design initiatives – that is the kind of stuff people should be following if they care to know the real parameters of excellence.