“People are saying, ‘Why reinvent the wheel?’” according to Davis. “We have a proven process. We bring the users and vendors together to solve interoperability problems.” Adding legitimacy to the effort, the Health Information Technology Standards Panel, charged by the federal government with harmonizing divergent health-IT standards, is participating in the Connectathon for the second consecutive year.

Results of the Connectathon should be posted at www.ihe.net by the end of this week. If all goes as planned in Chicago, the Interoperability Showcase in Orlando will feature a simulation of the planned National Health Information Network, including data sharing between health information exchanges from Massachusetts and Indiana, Davis says.

The Interoperability Showcase will take up 12,000 square feet of the HIMSS exhibit hall next month, one-third more space than it had a year ago. “We’re rivaling the biggest displays on the floor,” Davis says.

Meanwhile, HIMSS and RSNA are moving ahead with plans to spin off IHE as an independent, international entity, possibly by midyear. On Jan. 10, the interim board of IHE International accepted membership applications from 93 companies and organizations, and Davis says more than 60 additional applications are under consideration. Each member will be eligible to vote in the first election of IHE International board members in March.

Microsoft is advancing development of its HealthVault connectivity platform by engaging the Mayo Clinic to create unspecified consumer health management tools, the software giant announced Friday.

Details are lacking, but in general, the Mayo Clinic Health Solutions commercial division of the Rochester, Minn., group practice will collaborate with the Microsoft Health Solutions Group to develop applications to run on HealthVault. Microsoft launched HealthVault — called a personal health record (PHR) by many observers but not the Redmond Empire itself — with much fanfare last October.

“What we have is an agreement to collaborate strategically,” George Scriban, product manager of the Consumer Health Platform for the Microsoft Health Solutions Group, tells Digital HealthCare & Productivity. “What we don’t have are the details of what we will be doing.”

Scriban adds, “These things require an enormous amount of thought.”

Microsoft boasted about 40 HealthVault partners at the Oct. 4 debut, and has since said more than 200 companies have agreed to use the technology platform. The Mayo-HealthVault research agreement appears to be the first of its kind, however. “I think every partner will have a different level of commitment to the project,” Scriban says.

“We’re really in the early stages of this partnership,” explains Mayo Clinic Health Solutions chief medical officer Brooks Edwards, M.D. “Where that’s going to evolve is still up in the air.”

“Microsoft has the technology horsepower and Mayo has the research horsepower,” Edwards says. “We think HealthVault has a lot of potential. We think it will be of use for Mayo patients and we think it will be of use for consumers.”

According to Scriban, “There are some natural sympaticos between Microsoft HSG and Mayo’s systematic approach to medicine.” For nearly a century, Mayo has followed the “unit record” concept, in which all patient health information is kept in a single file in a central repository. Microsoft is billing HealthVault as a common data-collection point.

Today, Mayo has a home-grown, centralized electronic medical record for its campuses in Minnesota, Florida, and Arizona, but no uniform means of sharing patient information with other provider organizations. Edwards, who was on stage at the introductory HealthVault press conference in October, would not say if Mayo would build a PHR on HealthVault, however.

Edwards says to expect some specifics on the partnership in six to 12 months.