I love stories of Cambridge geeks/entrepreneurs who turn their visions into award winning projects, having began life in their attic or shed – and the inspirational Dawson King is one such person whose How are you? electronic health record will revolutionise the way patients and medics share information, enabling patients to take control of their personal medical records.

Dawson, who founded Cambridge Healthcare a year ago, won the prestigious HealthInvestor’s Innovation Award for his pioneering smartphone enabled web, the world’s very first healthcare applications store and social network of healthcare. Uniquely, How are you? is free to all parties in the UK.

I met Dawson earlier this year when I sat next to him at the Business Weekly awards dinner, having read all about him on their website beforehand, and was delighted to learn more about the fantastic electronic health record he has created, especially as Chris Curry had recently been telling me about his Care with Canary telehealth project.

Dawson has already met with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to discuss his personal health record and its free access to patients and practitioners throughout the NHS. It meets NHS planned reforms to innovate and introduce healthcare technology; by 2015, GPs will be required to give patients online access to their medical records, putting patients in control of the health and care information they need.

Trials have been set up within the NHS and Third Sector organisations and venture capital funding has been secured. How are you? has now entered into advanced discussions around licensing with a plethora of potential partners in New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, China and elsewhere in Europe.  In addition, a partnership with Microsoft will soon see How are you? fully integrated with Microsoft’s HealthVault platform.

And to think it all started in Dawson’s attic!

PR associate Marcie Bell, of The Foundry House, and I, have teamed up to promote this excellent news.

Many congratulations to Dawson, a member of the NHS Innovation Council in the East of England, and his co-director at Cambridge Healthcare, Prof Alan Barrell, chair of the NHS Innovation Council in the East of England and chair of Health Enterprise East.