BOSTON – Personal health information networks are likely to prove better models for health data exchange than regional health information organizations, or RHIOs, speakers at a recent world conference on interoperability said.

The personal health record platforms, such as those provided by Microsoft, Google and Dossia provide hope for the exchange of health information sooner than could be achieved by RHIOs, R. Tim McNamar, founder and chief executive officer of e-certus inc., told healthcare executives at the 3rd Annual Leadership Summit on the Road to Interoperability held here last month.

“There’s no viable model for RHIOs,” said McNamar. McNamar, a Republican formerly part of the Reagan administration, criticized President George W. Bush for failing to provide the leadership for interoperability.

In discussing personal health information networks in an earlier session, Vince Kuraitis, a lawyer and principal of Better Health Technologies, said companies would begin to build applications for platforms such as Google Health, Microsoft’s Health Vault and Dossia.

“This will look more like a telephone network,” Kuraitis said.

David Kibbe, MD, senior adviser to the American Academy of Family Physicians, said, “We can’t expect government to build a network. Government didn’t build the Internet. Government didn’t build PCs.”

The interoperable health data exchange network will not be led by large institutions, he added. “It’s you and me, in other words.”

While it was Bush who called for an electronic medical record for every American by 2014, the whole effort at HHS (Health and Human Services) starting with the nation’s first healthcare IT coordinator David Brailer has been a failure, McNamar said.