Google and Microsoft want to do the same thing for personal health that software such as Quicken has already done for people’s personal finances.

Google Health, which was released in May, and Microsoft HealthVault, which launched last October, allow consumers to store and manage their personal medical data online.

Google Health puts you in charge of your health information. It’s safe, secure, and free.

• Organize your health information all in one place
• Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
• Keep your doctors up-to-date about your health
• Be more informed about important health issues
• Google stores your information securely and privately. We will never sell your data. You are in control. You choose what you want to share and what you want to keep private

You can try this here

Microsoft will also offer links to third-party services like medication reminders and programs that track users’ blood-­pressure and glucose readings over time. Microsoft® HealthVault™ is designed to put you in control of your health information. A free HealthVault account helps you collect, store and share information with family members and gives you a choice of applications and devices to help manage your fitness, diet and health. Here’s how it works.

See how hospitals will be able to connect with HealthVault in the future.

Our Health Privacy Commitment

• The Microsoft HealthVault record you create is controlled by you.
• You decide what goes into your HealthVault record.
• You decide who can see and use your information on a case-by-case basis.
• We do not use your health information for commercial purposes unless we ask and you clearly tell us we may.

Users will be able to gather information from doctors, hospitals, and testing laboratories and share it with new medical providers, making it easier to coördinate care for complicated conditions and spot potential drug interactions or other problems.

What Google and Microsoft promise to do with electronic records is also a radical departure, both conceptually and in practice. Those patients who do currently have electronic access generally use portals maintained by doctors or health-care systems. Typically, patients can view information such as prescriptions, lab results, and diagnoses; sometimes they can e-mail doctors or make appointments online. In most cases, though, patients do not control their own data, so they cannot transfer it electronically to a different health-care provider or plug it in to third-party applications.

With HealthVault and Google Health, however, consumers will have fundamental ownership of their medical data, much as they do with financial records.