Mayo Clinic and Microsoft partner for medical records

The Mayo Clinic and Microsoft are launching an online personal health management application that could eventually communicate with doctor and pharmacy records.

The Mayo Clinic Health Manager is a free, secure application that stores your medical records and information. It can store data about multiple family members, and provide suggestions to manage an illness.

Mayo Clinic Dr. Phillip Hagen said it will help consumers centralize their health information in an era of multiple doctors and clinics.

"There's a big need for medical systems, electronic medical records, hospital systems to be able to talk with personal health records, and to be able to talk to other health-oriented systems, pharmacy systems for example," Hagen said.

Hagen said eventually these systems will be able to share data when a consumer gives them permission. For now, the consumer enters the data. The application is part of Mayo Clinic's goal to help health consumers stay informed and organized.

"Our vision is that someday the consumer will be able to bridge to their doctor, to all of their doctors, keep it in a central location, have control of it themselves, and know that it is safe and secure," he said.

As an example, Hagen said pharmacies could be given permission to automatically update prescription information in the Health Manager. The online application is free and available to anyone, whether a patient or not.

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