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IBM is introducing as many as 70 thousand of its employees, which represents 60 percent of its workforce in the United States, to the world of personal health records. This was announced by IBM's vice president Martin Sepulveda, who deals with health benefits at the Armonk, N.Y. firm.

The company decided to use WebMD for this proposes and in 2005 it launched this digitalized service. They choose this Internet Web site for its name recognition and because it confirmed to IBM's stringent requirements with regard to the issues of storage, encryption, passwords and physical security of personal medical data. Sepulveda explains that his company saw scale and scope of this Web site as being broader than the others that were available. Their is an effort to support low cost health insurance through this initiative.

The PHR or personal health records data are being maintained by WebMD, Sepulveda said. The company has no access to the data and the company's role, according to him, is to guarantee that the sources of pertinent information are fed into WebMD's database in a timely manner. The company offers rebates of as much as $150 to employees that participate in the database.

Another company dealing with providing a service with regard to PHRs is Google (GOOG). They have been testing their PHR using the records of 1,500 patients located at the Cleveland Clinic. This platform is being designed to have portability so that users can be allowed to transfer their data to another Web site or application. This is according to Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt which he explained in a speech given last month in Orlando at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's annual meeting.

Schmidt stressed the importance of gaining the trust of customers knowing that a lack of trust will lead them to find another provider to handle their personal health data. The basis of trust is to assure clients that the information belongs exclusively to them answer is not to be shared with anyone without their permission. Schmidt also announced that the Google service will be free to users.

Kevin Lyles, who serves as a partner in the health-care practice of the Jones Day law firm in Columbus, Ohio, and who represents hospitals and physician groups, stresses the importance of the information being accurate and readily assessable, and how this is important to health-care workers, who are concerned about having to sort through stacks of data during an emergency.

George Scriban, who serves as the product manager for Microsoft's (MSFT) HealthVault out of Redmond, Washington, says that this is often the case when inadvertently, mistakes are made in listing medications, and that this often happens in the offline world as well.