Mayo Clinic HEALTH MANAGER now includes Features for People Managing Hypertension and High Cholesterol

Thursday, September 24, 2009

ROCHESTER, Minn. and REDMOND, Wash., — As part of Mayo Clinic and Microsoft Corp.'s shared vision to help families take better care of their health, the two companies have made enhancements to Mayo Clinic Health Manager, a free online application designed to help people organize and better manage their health. People with conditions such as hypertension and high cholesterol will now have access to a variety of trackers and up-to-date information to help keep their conditions under control.

Users of Mayo Clinic Health Manager now will have access to stress, blood pressure and cholesterol trackers, as well as to additional guidance and information, allowing them to easily track and manage these conditions.

"We are committed to continually updating health guidance to reflect ever-changing best practices. Our new features help people suffering from hypertension and high cholesterol better manage their health based on the expertise of Mayo Clinic physicians," said Sidna Tulledge-Scheitel, M.D., a primary care physician at Mayo Clinic's campus in Rochester and medical director of Mayo Clinic Global Products and Services. "The fields of technology and medicine are constantly advancing, and Mayo Clinic Health Manager will continue to evolve so our users will always have the best health information and tools."

The updated Mayo Clinic Health Manager also includes a "Tell-a-Friend" sharing link on each page that allows users to inform family members about useful features of the product and new immunization enhancements. This functionality targets busy parents who not only need to accurately track their children's immunization list, but to understand what immunizations are needed and allow them to easily share the list with schools, sports camps and doctors.

Mayo Clinic Health Manager launched last April, offering easy-to-use features designed for busy parents, adults who are managing the health concerns of aging parents, and patients managing chronic conditions and multiple medications. The site also allows people to organize health information for themselves and their families in a single location for a lifetime. The data is stored in Microsoft HealthVault, so people can access their information when they need it — regardless of whether they change doctors, clinics, jobs or insurance plans.

Mayo Clinic Health Manager gives users access to the right information at the right time to help them make the best decisions possible. Consumers can learn more about Mayo Clinic Health Manager at www.mayoclinic.com.

About Microsoft HealthVault
Microsoft HealthVault is a personal health application platform designed to put consumers in control of their health information. HealthVault provides a privacy- and security-enhanced foundation on which a broad ecosystem of providers can build innovative health and wellness solutions such as personal health records, disease management, fitness, weight loss and other Web applications. HealthVault can be used to collect and store health information that would otherwise reside in disparate systems and transfer the information between a variety of providers' health services and systems. It enables the reuse and free flow of interoperable and transportable personal health information.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers, and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has campuses in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz.; and community-based providers in more than 70 locations in southern Minnesota., western Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. For information about research and education, visit www.mayo.edu. MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) is available as a resource for your health stories.