The path to wide-scale EHR implementation is still barred by many obstacles.A decade ago, most medical practice managers believed that the shift toward the total digitization of medical information was inevitable. In reality, however, the transition from dead trees to bytes has proven to be a bit more complex than expected.

InformationWeek’s recent take on the slow march toward universal EHR implementation insightfully points out some of the chief obstacles that have hindered and delayed the transition process.

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Microsoft’s HealthVault hopes to bring EMRs to consumersYou can always tell when a particular industry is getting hot: when big tech players start jockeying for position. Microsoft, AOL, and Google are all announcing different electronic medical records initiatives.

Microsoft has unveiled what it calls HealthVault , a sort of personal filing cabinet for storing important medical information on yourself and your family. It allows the consumer to give access to physicians or hospitals. It also includes HealthVault Search, a health search tool designed to work with the platform. Accessible on the HealthVault Web site, this search engine promises to “intuitively [organize] the most relevant online health content, allowing people to refine searches faster and with more accuracy, and eventually connect them with HealthVault-compatible solutions.”

This latter feature. or dream, to be able to connect to other compatible solutions, is part of the eventual goal of a nationalized electronic health record repository. Is this a new idea? No. It has been tried before with limited success. But now that some big players are jumping into the fray, we may see some momentum.

Still, there are some unanswered questions. HealthVault, for example, does not need to be HIPAA-compliant because patients are granting access to whomever they choose. How this would mesh with true electronic medical records, which must be HIPAA-compliant, remains to be seen. There are also concerns about security – who actually owns the information and what happens if there is a security breach?

With less than 15% of medical practices using true EMR systems, consumers may end up beating doctors to the punch.

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