By Neil Versel

June 24, 2008 | With consumer acceptance of personal health records (PHRs) barely registering on the health-IT meter, one vendor is hoping an advertising blitz—and a different business model—can help move the needle. MedeFile International (Cedar Knolls, N.J.) last week launched a month-long ad campaign on major business and news networks.

The publicly traded company (MDFI on the over-the-counter market) has purchased 300 30-second spots, primarily on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and Bloomberg Television, to help educate consumers and corporate benefits managers, according to Medefile founder, chairman, and chief executive Milton Hauser. This week, the company also announced an exclusive marketing deal with API Marketing, Sales & Advertising Co. (Manalapan, Fla.) to sell MedeFile products and memberships at more than 100,000 retail outlets in the U.S. and Canada.

Although Hauser expects retail activity to begin within a few months, the initial focus of the educational campaign will be on the corporate side, however. “I don’t believe that a direct-to-consumer campaign is worthwhile now,” Hauser admits. He says it is far more efficient to reach out to human resources managers or group purchasers than to individuals.

“The chronic care market is in dire needs of this right now,” Hauser says. “Everybody needs it. Whether they understand it or not, that’s a different story.”

Where MedeFile hopes to distinguish itself from the WebMD-Revolution Health data-entry model and the Microsoft Health Vault-Google Health data-aggregation platform is with its information-gathering services. Hauser claims to have the only PHR offering that actively collects information from patient-designated sources, whether the records happen to be electronic or not. “That’s the hardest part,” says Hauser.

“The average person’s medical record is like a puzzle, with pieces scattered all over the place,” Hauser says. “What we do is put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

He says MedeFile can import electronic medical records, pharmacy records, and test results when available, but for the vast majority of patients whose health information is not in electronic form, the company scans the paper records and provides images to doctors and hospitals.

“We do not transcribe. We convert,” Hauser says, putting the information in a format that is “medically correct.” This helps shield the company from liability and give physicians confidence that they are seeing actual clinical records, he explains.

A subscription, which carries a retail price tag of $249 per year but is subject to group discounts, includes telephone reminders for patients to take their medications or see their doctors for chronic disease management.