It seems that the level of chatter about Personal Health Records has really jumped in the last few months with the entrance of Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault into the space.  On the whole, I’m excited about the move, but I am forced to wonder if the excitement is truly about PHRs or if it’s simply an expression of our fascination with all things Google.

To satisfy my curiosity, I looked at blog activity over the past few months talking about these three topics and came up with the following:

The impressive blue line spikes belong to Google Health.  Mentions of Google Health far outpace those of HealthVault or of PHRs in general.  This, perhaps, is not surprising.  What does surprise me is the volume of mentions of Google Health that don’t mention PHRs.  During the three announcement-driven spikes shown here (including the Beta launch in May), the majority of communications manage to talk about the concepts of Google Health without the buzzword.

Still, for what it’s worth, the overall discussion of PHRs seems to have received a small bounce from Google’s presence, so perhaps there is interest in the topic beyond the Goog.