HealthVault, Microsoft's online medical records repository and health search engine hybrid, would appear to be a likely shoo-in for pharmaceutical and health-care advertisers--but experts say that
user adoption is the crucial element that will determine its success.
"Maybe Microsoft will have success at this, but first they have to build up an audience," said Robert Kadar,
CEO of Good Health Advertising. "People have been talking about digitizing and making health records universally available for a long time, but I don't think any company has achieved the mass reach
that will make it a national phenomenon."
With HealthVault, users can create new health records, import them from providers like doctors, hospitals and labs, and even upload data from personal
care devices such as glucose or blood pressure monitors. They can then access this stored data whenever it's needed--a boon to frequent travelers--and ultimately give doctors or other health
professionals access to the info as well.
The free online storage hub will be monetized primarily by search traffic, as it's tied to Microsoft's health search engine (also called HealthVault)--a
feature powered by the MedStory technology the software giant acquired last year. According to Peter Neupert, vice president of the Microsoft Health Solutions Group, "search is a big market and we can
monetize this around health searches with online ads."
Health is a booming search vertical, as according to Jupiter Research, 71% of online consumers use search engines to find health-related
information.
But the possible relationship between health information and advertising may actually deter user adoption--as it raises privacy issues (on top of the data protection
concerns)--especially with a corporation like Microsoft that carries some baggage with consumers.
Indeed, the blogosphere buzzed with citizen commentary on the day of the announcement, with some
posters calling attention to possible negative implications of the fine print in HealthVault's Terms of Service.
In a blog post called "Use HealthVault, Lose Your Rights," Dr. Ignacio H. Valdes,
MD, MS argues that users should ultimately be concerned for the security and anonymity of their records because of stipulations like the following:
In order to provide you the Service, we may
collect certain information about Service performance, your machine and your Service use. We may automatically upload this information from your machine.
But according to Chris Schroeder, CEO of
the HealthCentral Network, Microsoft is "obsessed with [privacy and security] in all parts of their product development. Time will tell, but if they are not as secure or more than your bank, they have
no product--and they know this." Schroeder's HealthCentral Network is one of many of Microsoft's HealthVault partners--a group that includes New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Texas Instruments and the
American Heart, Diabetes, and Lung Associations, among others.
"They will go at this slowly and with care, and with clear, transparent permission--real and not assumed permission," added
Schroeder. "They appear to have some general ads and will do some general targeting at first--but anything beyond that, they are very sensitive to the trust issues for users."
Meanwhile,
Microsoft's Neupert did not completely rule out future contextual targeting of ads to user information contained in the HealthVault. "Currently, we are not targeting Web results or the ads based on
data in a user's HealthVault record," he said in a statement. "We may do that some time, but we are not doing it now."
While health and wellness advertisers might leap at the chance to target
users based on pre-existing conditions or known ailments, if Microsoft cannot assuage enough of their data privacy and security concerns, there may never even be a critical mass to target.