Earlier this week the Mayo Clinic unveiled the Mayo Clinic Health Manager – an online tool where patients can story medical records. They have partnered with Microsoft on the product. It looks like a great tool; it reminds me of Google Health.

A Pew Internet & American Life report (Aug 2008) indicates that here is a market out there; they found that 78% of home broadband users look online for health information (even 70% of home dial-up users looked online for health info). The broadband users were twice as likely as dialup users to look up health info on a typical day (12% vs. 6%).

It seems as if all of the folks posting health care info online (Mayo & Microsoft, Google Health, UnitedHealth Group). I wonder if this fits in with the work that Governor Pawlenty spoke about last summer when he announced that every state employee would have online access to their personal health portfolio by 2009.

Also I wonder how these various tools can help support the broadband that will make their tools more successful. I have to think the potential of doubling your daily visits is worth something – and the Pew report indicates that might be possible with broadband. (OK, doubling is generous – but I think we could say substantially increase without debate.)