Microsoft has a beta version of what they are calling Health Vault. It is publicly available so you can try it but you will need a Windows Live ID. I already had one so I gave it a try it was easy enough to sign in. It is easy to create a profile for yourself. The area of records look a little like an excel table. I have a screenshot below of the Medication table it is empty but you can see that it would be easy to read.
Medication Table.
Below I show a form of how they they allow you to add a predefined record type. In this case an allergy and how you react when and other information about the allergy.
Adding an Allergy Form
They allow you with the default options to add a fair few things like your allergies, medications, diabetic entries to track it over time, and so on. I wasn’t able to try it but their are some devices you are supposed to be able to buy that can enter info. for you so that you can easily track things like diabetic testing or blood pressure. You can also add things like Custody of Care forms. They also allow you to just upload a file so that if you can’t enter it into one of there predefined records then you can upload it as another file type and you can retrieve it and read it, its just not as convenient. You can also tell it is not quite finished, for example I could never figure out how to enter my blood type but there is a spot for it. It will also allow you to export your data as a csv (comma separated value) file which can easily be imported into other programs like excel or a database. They could easily add more formats in the future.
All in all I think it has potential but is not done yet. If I was a person with a Windows Live ID it would be an easy option to pick in the future when it is a bit more refined. The Windows Live ID also give you access to a lot of other services, like email, blogs, web pages, etc… So they could tie it into other services they already provide and give you a one sign in access to a lot of what you may want to use. But before you jump on and try Health Vault wait until I tell you about Google Health.
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