Major U.S. Employers Join to Provide Lifelong Personal Health Records for Employees

Major U.S. Employers Join to Provide Lifelong Personal Health Records for Employees

As the cost of providing health care continues to rise, Applied Materials, BP America, Inc., Intel Corporation, Pitney Bowes, Inc. and Wal-Mart are funding an independent nonprofit institute to develop “Dossia,” a Web-based framework through which U.S. employees, dependents and retirees can maintain lifelong personal health records. Together, the companies will provide this benefit to more than 2.5 million individuals across the United States starting next year.

“Dossia will empower individuals to manage their own health care, improve communications with their doctors, and ensure more complete and accurate information for health care providers than the current fragmented, paper-based system,” said JD Kleinke, chairman and CEO of the Omnimedix Institute, the non-profit organization with headquarters in Portland, Ore. that is developing Dossia. “With Dossia’s personal, private and portable personal health records, individuals will be able to maintain comprehensive, up-to-date histories for themselves and their families.”

The unique Dossia framework gathers health information on behalf of the individual from various sources and stores it within secured databases. Dossia’s open architecture will support multiple personal health applications, allowing users to organize and summarize their information in ways that are most useful to them. Health records will be secure and private, accessible only by the individual or by others to whom they have granted permission. Records also will be portable, enabling individuals to continue using the records even if they change employers, health plans or doctors.

Dossia’s members believe that, as the largest purchasers of health care, they can and should play a role in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system. The founding members of Dossia are also united in their belief that increasing health care costs to employers threaten the nation’s competitiveness. With employers paying almost half of all U.S. health care costs, Dossia will be an important component in making the health care system more efficient and effective, eliminating waste and duplication of effort on behalf of consumers and providers.

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