Vanguard Health Systems has become the tenth company to join the Dossia Consortium, which is a non-profit organization made up of U.S. employers that seek to empower their employees to make smarter, more informed healthcare decisions by providing them with access to their healthcare data through what the consortium calls a personally-controlled health record (PCHR). That sounds a lot like a personal health record (PHR).

The other nine members of Dossia: Applied Materials, AT&T, BP America, Cardinal Health, Intel, Pitney Bowes, Abraxis BioScience, sanofi-aventis and Wal-Mart.

"I am very excited for Vanguard to be a part of Dossia's mission to bring vital healthcare tools to our employees, and look forward to further developments from this partnership in the future," Charlie Martin, Chairman and CEO of Vanguard Health Systems said in a statement. "Current market conditions are creating a great need for untethered PHRs, and Dossia's PCHR is perfectly positioned to fill that need. Transportability of healthcare data is key to empowering employees with control over their own healthcare." More

ALSO: Dossia has its eye on mobile applications, too -- to learn more about its perspective on the mobile opportunity in healthcare, be sure to attend MobiHealthNews Presents: Everywhere Healthcare at the CTIA I.T. & Entertainment event in San Diego in October. Dossia CEO Colin Evans is one of the speakers at the event.