Hello, Health Statements!

After getting home from HIMSS Thursday night, barely making it through work on Friday, and sleeping pretty much all day today, I’m finally feeling close to normal again. What an insane week --- our little four-person HealthVault contingent was not nearly big enough to handle the interest and excitement about the service. Things are really starting to light up, and I’ll write about our time there in a day or so.

But first I wanted to celebrate our latest release, which launched about a week and a half ago. Ali already posted a comprehensive review of changes and updates --- I want to focus in on a key new feature that we call “Health Statements.”

There are some health tasks we do every day, at certain times of our lives. When we’re trying to lose weight or get fit, are learning to deal with a new diagnosis, or are sick or injured, that’s when we think about our health. But most of the time, most of us would much rather ignore it… because it’s not very fun and frankly a little scary.

At the same time, all of us --- especially parents --- understand that being prepared and aware is part of our responsibility as caregivers to our families and ourselves. Keeping up to date on immunizations, ensuring that emergency profiles are accurate, watching out for FDA recalls or drug interactions, identifying dangerous trends early --- these things are super-important!

That’s what our new “Health Statement” is all about : providing a helpful, periodic summary that contains a quick update on recent changes and other things that might need your attention.

It’s a lot like the monthly statement I get from my identity protection service. Even if nothing has changed with my credit report, it’s great to get the update that all is ok. We’re excited to provide the same kind of peace of mind around family health.

We’ve started with simple reminders: update and reprint your emergency profile, review changes made by applications, that kind of thing. But we’ve got a whole backlog of items to add, and we’d love to hear what you consider important as well. Please drop your comment on this post and I’ll make sure it gets in front of the right folks!

One more step on our journey to better healthcare. Great stuff!