Michael Critelli, chairman and CEO of Pitney Bowes, said Dossia will help expand his company's efforts to curb health care costs. These efforts, which include fitness and nutrition programs, have already helped the company reduce its health care costs by 10 percent to 40 percent for various chronic diseases, he said. For example, Dossia will allow the company to electronically remind patients of physician appointments, he said.

"We can actually increase the tools available to the employee to do what needs to be done," he said. "People want those things, but we don't have any systematic reliable way to get it to them."

Patricia Miller, senior vice president of human resources at BP, said her company can't quantify at this time how much money it may be able to save on health care costs with Dossia.

"We are confident that just the efficiencies that this sort of system will bring will have to by definition reduce costs ... by fewer errors being made, reducing duplicate tests," she said. "It is an investment as part of a collaborative process to help seek solutions to what is really an out-of-control situation with the rising costs of health care."