The Mayo Clinic and Microsoft Corp. have teamed up to offer a free, secure, online website that will allow people to store personal health and medical information.

Called the Mayo Clinic Health Manager, the website is set to launch Tuesday and is similar to sites offered by Google Health and Revolution Health which are meant to help people keep medical information and transfer it to a new hospital, clinic or specialist.

Going a step further Mayo Clinic Health Manager will additionally offer customized information, such as reminders for checkups, from one of the most respected brands in health care. Dr. Sidna Tulledge-Scheitel, medical director for Mayo Clinic Global Products and Services Division said, "The more you enter, the more personalized the health care reminders and guidance there will be for each family member."

Anyone can sign up for an account at the Mayo Clinic Health Manager including people who aren't patients of Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic Health Manager uses Microsoft's HealthVault software system to store patient's records which include medical histories, test results, immunization files and other records from doctors' offices and hospital visits, as well as data from home devices like heart rate monitors.

The site based on the family medical history, current and past health problems, allergies and medications and age, gender and other factors recommends additional tasks such as scheduling check ups and articles for further reading. The site also provides provisions for people to add contact details for doctors, insurance companies etc and set reminders for scheduled appointments.

The Mayo Clinic Health Manager will offer advice and reminders for asthma, pregnancy and immunizations from birth to end of life to begin with while high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes care advice will be added later this year.

The downside to the site is the fact that as many doctors and health care providers have not shifted to electronic records it means the patient has to type in the information into the Health Manager themselves.

Giving the pros of the Health Manager, Chris Bevolo, owner of Interval, a Minneapolis health care marketing firm said Mayo could have an edge over its rivals if consumers see the new site as not just a holder of information but a way to get health advice from reputed medical leaders.

Issuing a warning to people, Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, said sites like the Mayo Clinic Health Manager aren't currently covered by national laws that specify cases in which health care systems can access and share information without patients' consent.