Dossia

Dossia is a consortium formed of the nation’s largest companies and employers looking to offer their employees with Personally Controlled Health Records (PCHR). Through research and implementation efforts, Dossia hopes to create a web-based platform in which consumers can access their health information and proceed to make sound health decisions via the tools provided through the web application.

Dossia currently serves approximately 1.4 million employees and affiliates of the member companies involved. The Dossia Consortium’s roster consists of [|AT&T], [|Wal-Mart], [|Pitney Bowes], [|BP America], [|Applied Materials], [|Cardinal Health], [|Intel], [|Sanofi-aventis], [|Abraxis BioScience] and [|Vanguard Health Systems] the most newest member of the consortium. “Each founding member pays $1.5 million to join Dossia, plus per-employee fees related to the production costs associated with the personal health records, said Dossia CEO Colin Evans.”1 In fact, the addition of Vanguard Health Systems (VHS) in this group is exciting to the consortium as VHS is healthcare provider that operates its own hospitals and healthcare facilities. The venture is now empowered with a healthcare provider’s perspective on health issues.

The Dossia is comprised of two sub-entities that work together to complete the Dossia mission; 2Dossia Foundation and Dossia Service Corporation. Dossia Foundation is responsible for the information architecture of the PCHR system addressing issues concerning the data stored and the decision support system for consumers. Dossia Service Corporation’s responsibilities lie in managing the technology infrastructure that supports the PCHR system and delivering the service to consumers

= = =Applications= The hope is that Dossia will come up with an effective solution to the many issues surrounding the healthcare, healthcare cost and electronic health records. The launch of a successful system could have a tremendous impact in how consumers, healthcare providers and insurance companies approach healthcare. With a growing trend of consumers becoming more active in the decisions made about their health and the need to reduce healthcare costs, the need for electronic health records has become more prevalent.

Some major concerns about any EMR is that is will always be vulnerable to a hacker unless it is not connected to the Internet. Any hacker can find someone's personal information on an EMR, no matter how secure it is. This has many people worried, as well as medical organizations and businesses as this opens up a liability for them as well as for the consumer. Most internet security companies assure the consumers and businesses that they are safe. = =

=Web Resources= media type="youtube" key="GC-TTam4NnQ" width="425" height="350" http://www.dossia.org/consumers/Dossia_pressRelease.pdf http://www.dossia.org/consumers/Dossia_CompanyStatements.pdf http://www.dossia.org/consumers/Dossia_advocates.pdf [|http://www.dossia.org/news/video/]

=Related Terminology= EMR EHR ; EHR [2] - Electronic Medical Record (EMR) - Electronic Health Record (EHR) - Personal Health Record (PHR), - National Health Information Network (NHIN) - Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO)

=References= http://www.dossia.org/founders/ http://www.omnimedix.org/dossia.html - 1[] - 2[]