Digital Blood Pressure Check

The nuts and bolts required for that deployment have been available for years. Technology ranging from scanning, to health-monitoring devices, to digital workflow solutions have been on the market, continually improving in ease of use, effectiveness, manageability and security. But health-care providers, insurers and others have been cautious, keeping adoption slow.

About a year ago, Microsoft brought its own broad-based solution to market. HealthVault, which can be delivered as a customizable enterprise solution for insurers, hospitals and physicians, as well as consumer-friendly records management for individuals, is Microsoft's best-known health-care offering to date. In many regards, HealthVault is Software-as-a-Service for health institutions and health-care consumers alike.

But does it work? Could doctors—many of whom operate as their own small or midsize business—and their patients finally be convinced that the cost savings, convenience, security and conformity with HIPAA regulations are worth the bother? We decided to test a common application that can be connected to a doctor or hospital's back end to see for ourselves.

Omron, based in Kyoto, Japan, makes a number of digital health appliances and software products, and is one of several health-care vendors that support, and are supported by, the HealthVault platform. We picked up, at retail, one of its $65 blood-pressure monitoring devices: the Omron HEM 670IT with IntelliSense monitoring technology.

The HEM 670IT also comes with a desktop application, Omron Health Monitoring Software, and we installed it onto a PC running Windows Vista Ultimate. The desktop app installs in about two minutes, once Microsoft .Net Framework is installed beforehand. The device itself is a common, off-the-shelf blood-pressure monitoring gauge; it wraps around the left wrist, has a 2-inch LED screen to display data, and connects via USB to the PC. (We produced a few incorrect blood-pressure results before we figured out the proper way to hold the arm during testing.)

Once the device captures the patient's blood pressure, it stores it in internal memory; the Health Monitoring Software application can then upload the data into either spreadsheet or graphic form on a daily, multiple-times-daily, or weekly basis.

So a patient can check his or her blood pressure at home. So what? The integration between Microsoft and Omron allows the patient to take it to the next level—establishing a personal account.

Establishing a personal HealthVault account is simple. After signing up for the service, HealthVault gives the user the option of uploading data to a supported device—which includes the Omron HEM 670IT and the Omron Health Monitoring Software. It's as simple as pointing and clicking, and the device data is uploaded to the patient's personal HealthVault account. Once there, the patient can choose to share the data with his or her physician.

Let's deal with the potential objections to this:

Security and confidentiality.

All data is password-protected and all sharing of data is authorized directly by the patient.

Ease of use.

Not all patients are capable of monitoring their own blood pressure, let alone transferring it to a PC and uploading it to HealthVault. But for many patients, it's a matter of 30 minutes, out of the box, before they are using it.

Financial incentives for solution providers.

This solution, in and of itself, may not turn up attractive hardware or software margins. However, as part of an overall digital-record solution, which may qualify for federal stimulus funding, it may be enticing to doctors, who have been among the biggest skeptics. Digital health records are a strategic part of the U.S. economic rebound strategy. We recommend Omron-HealthVault as a baby step for VARs that want to bring clients into the 21st century.