Interesting criticism of last week’s two PHR releases at Matthew Holt’s “The Health Care Blog.” In hisTECH: PHRs, EMRs and pretty much useless surveys, Holt criticizes both Markle and Manhattan research for surveys that suggest Americans are in favor of PHRs and EMRs.

According to Markle, you may remember, 71 percent of Americans favor EMRs. Read the numbers more carefully (by reading to the bottom of their release), you’ll see that 60 percent of Americans want a online PHR that is secure. Only 19 percent of respondents say they wouldn’t use one under any circumstances.

The point? People are interested in PHRs, but they are concerned about privacy. Which they should be, right?

Manhattan Research put out a release the next day that read: 29.8 Million U.S. Consumers Demand Personal Health Records (emphasis mine). That’s about 15 percent of the population – not a really significant number. (I’m sure at least half of Americans want an iPod Nano in black. The other half want a white one.)

Holt’s argument is that the interest in PHRs is not at all being driven by consumers – who probably don’t even know what a PHR is – and that they won’t – until they are as cheap as AOL access was in its heyday.

If you’d asked consumers about their interest in online banking, online poker or online porn back in 1993, their answers would have been equally irrelevant. Consumers got online because they got used to it at university and work, and then at home it became available cheap (thanks AOL) and most of all because of email… then all those other applications took off because someone supplied them and aggressively marketed them.

The key issue, according to Holt, is that “we’re still a long way from many doctors having the data in a usable format to supply to their patients.”

Holt is being pessimistic. And Newt Gingrich is being overly optimistic when he calls for the government to set a goal of every American having an EHR by December 2006 (link).

Probably, what will happen is that private industry will step in, accelerate the process and create something like what Australia’s Healthe has created.

CODA:
The Internet – and the blogosphere in particular – is a beautiful place. Erica Fishman of Manhattan Research responded to Holt’s criticism of the survey’s numbers.

To quote Fishman:

I do agree with you that consumers will not be using PHRs until they “get used to it,” as you put it. This is the main point of our Consumer Health Interactivity module. [Editor: Which is what?] If consumers are not yet adopting online interactive tools and programs, PHRs will not be a reality for a long time. Furthermore, taking advantage of highly interactive features, such as email with a physician, can help prime consumers for future PHR use. In fact, our study reveals that consumers with chronic health conditions who are currently emailing with their physicians are 230% times as likely to be interested in transmitting personal health data online as online consumers with chronic conditions who have no interest in emailing with physicians.

HIT. Never a dull moment.