Microsoft's new Health Valult, a PHR?

I received notification about this new offering by Microsoft, "Health Vault". Dr Crounse, Worldwide Health Director for the Microsoft, writes about it in his blog.

As a practicing physician, I'm really excited about this application and have signed up for a personal account. My plan is to start enrolling my patients with the hope of consolidating their medical data.

I found however that the application did not have a place for me to enter my past medical history, medication lists etc. I think, for this application to work for my patients, this feature needs to be in place. Perhaps this feature already exists. If this is the case, it needs to be more obvious to the user. I know this is in beta, so I'm willing to wait. My hope is that the Health Vault is a true PHR.

There is an interesting integration feature. I can fax documents to my patient's account using a fax subscription service that converts the faxed document to a PDF file for storage in the patient's Health Vault. The patient must subscribe to the service. The cost is very reasonable however.

I will write more about the HealthVault as I discover more of its features.