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As Canada moves toward converting medical records into electronic form, private companies are taking what many see as the next step - putting health information into patients' hands.

Web-based services being launched by the likes of Google and Microsoft promise to help patients track treatments, medications and appointments. They could also help to manage chronic diseases.

In contrast to the electronic health records that provincial governments are working on, personal electronic records will "help people take control of their health information," says Roni Zeiger, product manager for Google Health at Google Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. Google's product has been launched in the United States but is not yet available in Canada.

Once these services are launched and linked to a provincial health-care system, for instance, subscribers would be able to download data from hospitals and clinics, add information about their prescriptions and even link to devices such as blood pressure monitors.

The two efforts will go together, says Richard Alvarez, president and chief executive of Canada Health Infoway, a federally funded not-for-profit organization promoting the development of electronic records. "The personal health records now on the market are really a complementary piece to the work that we started a few years ago."

The Web-based systems will store the information, and subscribers can view it from any Web browser by signing in to the site. Patients can authorize who can see their accounts - family doctors, specialists, emergency room personnel or family members.

These setups could help people care for aging parents. If you are travelling with Mom who becomes ill and is prescribed an antibiotic, you can enter this into the system and you might get an immediate warning about a possible conflict with another medication, Mr. Zeiger says.

Instead of a child looking after a parent, it might be the other way around. Parents would be able to use the services to track their kids' doctor visits, medication and inoculations, says Marc Filion, chief operating officer and general director of Telus Health Solutions, an arm of Telus Corp. that plans to offer Microsoft's product, called HealthVault.

A patient could manually enter test results. Monitoring devices will feed data automatically into the system. An abnormally high or low blood sugar reading could trigger an alarm at the doctor's office.

"There is the potential to manage those chronic diseases more effectively," says John Moore, an analyst at Chilmark Research, based in Cambridge, Mass. "It's not just episodic. You're being monitored on a much more frequent basis."

Giving medical professionals easier access to data could also reduce unnecessary hospital visits, Mr. Filion says.

Consumer adoption of personal electronic health records has been slow, however. Most patients have no easy way of getting data from doctors and hospitals into their personal records, Mr. Alvarez says.

In Canada, the key will be agreements with health providers to make those records available to patients electronically.

Canada Health Infoway's first goal is to put patient records into electronic form across Canada, Mr. Alvarez says, and that effort is well along. After that, "there's no reason that they shouldn't be made available to the consumers themselves."

Major players in the United States are also working with pharmacy chains. Microsoft struck a deal with Walgreens to allow patients to import their prescription records, for instance.

Availability of these services in Canada is the other question. Google's Mr. Zeiger wouldn't comment on his company's plans.

Telus, which struck an agreement with Microsoft in the spring of 2009 to bring a version of HealthVault to Canada, will hold limited trials of the service, called Telus Health Space, this year, and expects to make it generally available early in 2011, Mr. Filion says. The company intends to license Health Space to governments and health-care providers, who will provide it to their patients. It, in turn, will earn money from licensing fees.

Health Space could be made available directly to individuals, too, but Telus says it is still working out its business plan for that.

Data will be hosted on Telus servers in Canada, thus addressing early concerns about Canadian health records being stored south of the border, where they would be subject to such laws as the Patriot Act, which gives U.S. security agencies access to personal information without the subject's knowledge.

Privacy concerns are still being debated in the United States, Mr. Moore says. Employers and insurers will be major sponsors of these systems, encouraging or requiring their use in the hope of reducing health-care costs.

How will patients feel about entering health information in an online record connected with their insurer? Not good, Mr. Moore predicts.

"Most people don't trust the insurers, even if the insurer says, 'Hey, we're not going to use this information against you,' " he says.

Mr. Alvarez says patient consent is key to the success of electronic health records, but experience so far is encouraging. In a trial in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., more than 95 per cent of patients readily agreed to give pharmacists access to their medical records, he says.

"We're also blessed with a universal health care system in Canada," he adds, "so notwithstanding pre-existing conditions, you have insurance."