Quoted: "Twelve months ago, the most important things on American voters' minds were the war and health care. Two days ago, the most important thing on American voters' minds is the economy. Health care and the war have taken a backseat."

With an aging population, behavior-related chronic conditions, and expensive innovations, companies must help people address their specific personal health concerns with thorough, transparent and specific information... Effective health engagement can build trust, and conversely, trust is the key to deeper engagement.

Quoted: Starting next month, many enrollees in the insurer's plans will be able to move information from their Aetna "personal health record" -- an online repository of data that includes claims, diagnoses, test results and prescriptions -- to HealthVault.

Quoted: Among the first pediatric healthcare centers nationwide to adopt Amalga, Seattle Children’s will now be able to consolidate and view valuable patient data currently locked in core IT systems.

Quoted: The District of Columbia Primary Care Association will use Microsoft Amalga to enable the sharing of data among local hospitals and six community-based health centers that are part of a newly formed District of Columbia Regional Health Information Organization.

Chilmark Research Inc., a consumer health care I.T. research firm, has released a report that analyzes how personal health records technology from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. already have changed the market for this technology.

Quoted: "PHR vendors are now directly experiencing the impact of this visibility with a significant increase in the number of requests for proposals from employers, providers and health plans. But with this increase in demand, consumer expectations will also rise, putting significant pressure on smaller, less capable PHR vendors and thus putting them at risk."

Quoted: Dossia, Google, Intuit, Microsoft, WebMD, AARP, America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Family Physicians - among other healthcare stakeholders - are endorsing the Connecting for Health framework created by the Markle Foundation's public-private collaboration.

Quoted: The health information exchange will use interoperability technology from Covisint to connect users of Microsofts HealthVault personal health record system with health care providers who use AT&Ts Healthcare Community Online network.

The combined platform offers various clinical applications, including:

*Electronic prescribing;
*Clinical messaging;
*Sharing of X-rays MRIs and CT scans;
*Exchanging of patient information from personal health records;
*Uploading of data from home health devices such as blood pressure meters and glucometers; and
*Telemedicine services.

Microsoft unveiled Thursday the second version of its Connected HHS Framework, which it hopes will connect disparate systems from programs within the agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Quoted: The company also announced the formation of a 15-member alliance of industry partners that will adopt the framework and work with Microsoft and HHS, said Kevin Dolan, Microsoft’s alliance director for U.S. public sector health and human services. “It’s common that there are multiple programs within the agencies that focus on health and human services,” Dolan said. “The data in those programs are disconnected and that doesn’t provide caseworkers with a full vision. It also doesn’t lead to coordinated care.”

For instance, caseworkers usually have access to client data only within their siloed systems, explained Dolan. The framework would ideally grant them access to information from other programs including child welfare, Medicaid, and even programs beyond HHS. The framework can be looked at primarily as a service-oriented architecture that follows industry and federal enterprise standards, said Dolan. The purpose, he added, is to identify common business and technology functions required across these federal programs, and then provide them in a way that allows coordinated case management.