Comparative evaluation of Google Health API vs Microsoft HealthVault API

Electronic Health Records (EHR) offer patients the opportunity to access their own medical records. Google and Microsoft recently extended their public services by introducing internet-based personal healthcare information platforms - Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. Over one hundred thousand people have registered at the two services since they were launched. Both companies invite other for-profit companies as well as non-profit organizations to participate in the design, development, and distribution of their own healthcare-related applications. Such applications are based on the free accessible EHR systems of Google and Microsoft and provide further benefits to patients. Due to its simplicity and usability, an API design could determine the variety of value-added applications developed and thus be essential for the commercial success (and potential market dominance) of one of these EHR systems. This work examines and compares the designs of Google Health API and Microsoft HealthVault API. Such an evaluation provides benefits for both research and practice: on the one hand, the results provide an overview of the different open API designs, and, on the other hand, the results provide the developer community with useful lessons learned from comparing the examined APIs.