Healthcare Software

Does Microsoft Healthvault Support CCD?

The notion of support is open to interpretation. Many vendors can claim “support” but is this really the case? In this post, I take a look at Microsoft Healthvault’s support for HL7 Continuity of Care Document (CCD).

Microsoft has apparently pushed the envelope in having support for CCD in Healthvault, but just how deep does it go? From what I see it:

Supports:

• Manual and programmatic add of a CCD document to health info
• Limited manual add of items from a CCD document to health info

Does Not Support:

• Programmatic import of health items sourced from a CCD document
• Export discrete data item to CCD format so other systems can read

According to Microsoft on its implementation:

This is a simple form of support for these data types. Some partners have requested the ability to create a CCR/CCD from individual data items in HealthVault, or to break a CCR/CCD into individual items and store those items in HealthVault. We understand the utility of that scenario, but haven't announced any plans about supporting that.

From the looks of it, Healthvault has some manner of support for CCD and it may be sufficient for a lot of people’s needs out there. However, its apparent lack of an export facility hurts the push for healthcare interoperability. A healthcare provider would have to use the HealthVault libraries in order to pull and push data to HealthVault rather than relying on a standard document format and interface. By not having a mechanism to pull data in CCD format forces everyone to support at least two formats when we should be trying to make things simpler.