Re: [projectvrm] Microsoft's Personal Health Care Records

I think Adriana's point is very important: zero-ing on the win-wins generated by empowering the individual the data manager.

 

On the security issue, there is the point that distributed data is much harder to hack than centralised data - or to be more precise, hackers are incentivised thousands of times over to focus on big, aggregated honeypots rather than 'isolated' bits of data held by individuals. The challenge is how to create such a distributed approach while also allowing for this data to be aggregated for specific purposes and also keeping all the security and other standards of 'big' centralised data. I think people like Paoga.com are already working on this.

 

On the direct win-win issue, I think one of the major points is that, however easy and hassle-free we would like it to be, creating a robust, rich, up-to-date, accurate personal database is an investment - of time, effort, attention and so on. For this to happen, individuals need to be confident that they will earn a decent return on their investment. Control is one aspect of this personal ROI. There is less incentive for me to invest in a database which is effectively held under the control of a third party and which looks like it could easily become more of an asset for them than it is for me. To me, Microsoft's HealthVault looks like it has been designed more with Microsoft's ROI in mind than the individual's. (Surprise!)

 

The danger of Microsoft's approach is that even though it zeroes in on many of the issues that we have raised,  it might never get off the ground and reach critical mass because not enough people will be confident there's a big enough ROI in it for them.

 

So, in this emerging area, big corporates have got to get their heads round a different way of thinking about win-win: that "we will get our ROI only if we help individuals get their ROI from investing in and using their own personal data assets. If we help them improve their ROIs, then they will see the sense in investing in a relationship with us".

 

Good business-to-business marketers have understood this type of logic for donkey's years. But currently, it is beyond the comprehension of most consumer marketers.

 

Alan M