Fred Trotter has a critique of HealthVault: ‘…Microsoft is famous for incorrectly implementing standards and creating new incompatible dialects. Microsoft has done this even when it goes in the face of a previously strong standard. Then they use their monopoly position to push adoption of their own dialect of a standard. Adoption of the Microsoft dialect then increases the reach and influence of the Microsoft monopoly, which increases Microsoft�s ability to enforce their own dialects, etc etc. If you have no idea what I am talking about then Google for the history of Microsoft�s implementations of Java, Kerberos and Javascript.

Not only has Microsoft not committed to implementing and not abusing a standard import and export format, it is making moves to create a proprietary standard in the place of CCR. HealthVault already has a MSDN page where you can learn how to �interface� with the Microsoft PHR. Microsoft intends to create a community of �Programs� within Healthvault by which third parties can further process medical data. Those programs will interface with Healthvault in a fashion that will create a �de facto standard� that Microsoft will abuse…’