Dossia jazzes up health record service

As one prominent personal health record service prepares to shut down, another has announced plans to expand.

Dossia, the PHR system several employers offer to their employees, announced in July that it is launching the Dossia Health Management System, an expanded PHR system that provides a variety of personalized, data-driven functions to empower patients.

The Dossia Health Manager will be available to all Dossia customers by fall. Some of the new features include social networking and weight management tools, healthy behavior challenges in a gaming environment and telehealth solutions that allow physicians to access and input data during remote clinical visits.

Shelley Harrison, spokeswoman for Dossia, said the decision to add the features comes from a desire to let consumers be more proactive about their health.

When possible, the new Dossia system automatically will aggregate data from multiple sources, including clinical, wellness and medical devices, insurance claims and self-entered data. The tools will be data stored in the PHR to make personalized recommendations and provide information based on what it finds.

"Mike Critelli, Dossia's CEO, believes that PHRs must be easy to use, including enrollment and sign-on, [and] that data must be automatically populated," Harrison said. She said that's what gives Dossia an advantage over other PHR products -- including Google Health -- that force users to enter data themselves. Google Health recently announced it will shut down next year.

A survey commissioned by the California HealthCare Foundation in the spring of 2010 found that only 7% of the American public use a PHR, a number that has remained consistent in subsequent surveys. The survey also found that PHRs offered by employers were the toughest sell.

Colin Evans, former CEO of Dossia, acknowledged at the time that getting employees to understand that better health care choices mean lower health care costs is a challenge. He said many employees often don't trust employer-sponsored PHRs because they think their employers will have access to their data.

Harrison said Dossia expects adoption rates to increase as new functions are added. The system will offer customers value and employers the opportunity to offer incentives for healthy choices.

Six of the 10 companies that founded Dossia in 2006, including Wal-Mart, Intel and AT&T, have rolled out the system to their employees. Three others plan to roll it out soon. Dossia does not share data on how many employees are active users of the system.

The expanded offerings will be available to all Dossia members for free, with the exception of a few services, such as telehealth visits and home lab test kits. Those services can be sponsored by employers or purchased directly from the online Dossia marketplace.