WASHINGTON – The Revolution Health Web site on Wednesday e-mailed users of personal health records notifying them its service would be discontinued by the end of February.

The e-mail offered no explanation. Nor did it indicate how many records would be affected. Revolution Health representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Washington, D.C.-based Revolution Health, an online health information company founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case in 2007, merged with Waterfront Media in October 2008.
 
The merger brought RevolutionHealth.com into Waterfront Media's Everyday Health Network, a network that claimed more than 20 million unique users and served as the market leader in audience reach for at least 23 health conditions. The combined company has 25 online health properties.

Industry analysts viewed the merger as a bid to compete with the acknowledged front-runner, WebMD.

On Jan. 24, Everyday Health filed an initial public offering, indicating it planned to raise $100 million. The filing comes just a year after the merger with Revolution Health. The company wants to trade under the symbol EVDY on the Nasdaq stock market. The company said it planned to use the proceeds to fund the development of new content and advertising-based services, capital expenditures, to repay credit, and for acquisitions.

The Revolution Health e-mail did not say what spurred the decision to drop the PHR service.

"Thank you for being a loyal user of the Revolution Health Personal Health Record," the e-mail read. "Unfortunately we will be discontinuing this service as of the end of February 2010 and removing all records, information, and data from the Revolution Health Web site."

Revolution Health recommended that PHR users download their records as a PDF to print and save for future records.