The long-term answer to improving the health of the nation’s population and curbing costs, experts agree, is to help people make smarter decisions day in and day out about their own health. And the most powerful potential tool in the march toward intelligent consumerism in health care may be the Web.
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...the Web is still mainly a vast trove of generalized health information. The ideal, health experts say, would be to combine personal data with health information to deliver tailored health plans for individuals. That is what Mr. Bosworth and his San Francisco-based company, Keas (pronounced KEE-ahs) Inc., mean to do.
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Using the Keas system, for example, a person with Type 2 diabetes might receive reminders, advice on diet and exercise, questions and prompts presented on the Web site or delivered by e-mail or text messages — all personalized for the person’s age, gender, weight and other health conditions.
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Other initial partners of Keas are impressed with its technology. Healthwise, a nonprofit supplier of online health information, has created 15 care plans for Keas so far, including ones on high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, weight management and stress management.
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[Our Emphasis] But Keas, said Jim Giuffre, president of Healthwise, has a feature that is distinct from other health services online. “They have developed the technology to make decisions from personalized data,” Mr. Giuffre said. “We think it’s going to help consumers make better health care choices.”
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The Keas site requires a user to sign in and fill out a questionnaire. Personal health records from Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault can be automatically fed into the Keas care plans.
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Another early partner is Quest Diagnostics, the nation’s largest clinical laboratory company, and, with permission, an individual’s lab data can influence the Keas plans. Users can put in as much or as little personal information as they want.
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The care plans present personalized status reports, as individualized dashboards, showing a person to be in the red, yellow or green bands. Green is good, and care plans make recommendations on how to get there.
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