Microsoft is closing its HealthVault patient-records service on November 20 | ZDNet
▻https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-is-closing-its-healthvault-patient-records-service-on-november-20
Microsoft is dropping its HealthVault patient records-management service, the company notified customers via email today, April 5. The service will be shut down on November 20 and any data residing in the service will be deleted after that date.
HealthVault was one of the last pieces left of Microsoft’s original foray into first-part health services products. Recently, Microsoft officials said they were ending support for the Microsoft Health Dashboard applications and services as of May 31. Early last year, Microsoft dropped its HealthVault Insights application.
HealthVault is a service for storing individuals’ health and medical records and information so they can be shared with health professionals. Microsoft launched a beta of HealthVault in 2007 and went live with the service in 2009. Microsoft was still updating its HealthVault documentation on the docs.microsoft.com site as of December 2018.
Microsoft is not giving up on the healthcare market. In February this year, Microsoft Healthcare announced it was making generally available its Healthcare Bot Service; adding more healthcare-specific features to Teams; and adding new health-record integration capabilities to Azure and Teams. But like it has been doing on many fronts lately, it seems to be getting out of the consumer-facing part of the business.
Microsoft made its initial foray into healthcare over a decade ago, but ended up retrenching and selling off most of the health assets it originally acquired. A couple of years ago, Microsoft announced it was creating a new healthcare-focused research unit, Healthcare NExT. Healthcare is one of Microsoft’s highest priority verticals, as it’s a growing and pervasive market.