The concept of using patient-controlled electronic health record banks as the basis for health information exchange programs got a boost March 16 with the launch of three pilot projects in Washington state.

With the possible injection of federal funds from the stimulus law into the program, officials said Washington could have a statewide health information infrastructure based on health record banks in place by 2011.

The pilot programs " hosted by Bellingham-based St. Joseph Hospital Foundation and The Critical Junctures Institute, the Cashmere-based Community Healthcare Network, and Inland Northwest Health Services in Spokane " will use Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health Web services for the interface to enable individuals to access their records in the banks.

Other personal health record products were considered, said Juan Alaniz, project manager for the health record banking program, but the technology they offered didn't provide the capability or user friendly formats of the Microsoft and Google applications.

"A big part of the pilots will be to assess the privacy and security aspects of these applications and see if what Microsoft and Google claim for them is true," Alaniz said.

The goal is to enroll at least 18,000 participants for the three programs, which have received some $1.7 million through state grants, to test the viability of health record banks. Another 2,000 will participate through the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, though that site won't receive state funding for the pilots.

Health record banks, similar to the financial variety, store information about patients gotten from existing institutions in individual accounts. Access to those accounts is controlled by the patients; physicians and other medical professionals who want to see those records can only gain access if the patients give their permission.

In this way, the banks get around many of the privacy concerns that have dogged other health information exchange projects where the data is controlled by hospitals and other medical institutions.

Preliminary results from the pilots will be ready by the end of June, Alaniz said, and the lessons learned will be used to refine the banking model so it can be scaled for statewide application.

Elements of the pilot studies will be used to apply for stimulus money which has to be made to federal authorities in May, according to Alaniz. If the application is successful, stimulus and private sector funds should be enough to carry the current and future pilots through to statewide implementation.

The need to apply for federal stimulus funds pushed the deadline for a statewide health information infrastructure to 2011, Alaniz said. The original target was 2012.