I worked for a startup in the electronic medical records space. Data interchange.

We had various interactions with both the Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault teams. They were both making patient facing apps, ours was physician (and staff) facing.

We had a patient facing app, because all the hospitals thought it'd drive admissions.

But at the time no doctor would trust patient's data.

To the best of my knowledge, that hasn't changed (five years on).

The "quantified self" movement may change the perception of patient gathered data. When data collection is automatic, standardized. More importantly, when doctors are doing it for themselves, so are familiar with the tools and culture.

So, in short, Google Health and MS HealthVault were just wishful thinking. There was no "there" there.