Your Smartphone Might Hold Key To Your Medical Records

By Elizabeth Stawicki
Minnesota Public Radio
JUN 17, 2013

It's one of those unhappy holiday surprises -- a visiting family member gets sick. That happened to Dr. Farzad Mostashari last Thanksgiving.

"My dad comes downstairs and he has acute pain in his eye where he had cataract surgery. And I said, 'What's the matter, what's the story?'" recalled Mostashari, who lives in Bethesda, Md. "And he said, 'Well, I think they put the wrong lens in my eye, I'd gone back to the doctor and...'" His father didn't remember exactly what had happened at his last doctor's appointment and the office was closed anyway.

How could a local doctor in Maryland access his dad's medical record in Boston? Through Medicare Blue Button, a computer program that allows patients to download their medical history into a simple text file on their smartphones and personal computers. Then third-party applications that you download help organize this information.

Mostashari certainly knew how to handle his dad's problem. After all, he's the coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and it's his passion and profession to promote electronic health records.

And, he had signed his dad up for Blue Button, which downloads three years of a patient's medical history, as well as the Humetrix iBlueButton, a smartphone app that translates and displays the information in a simple-to-understand way. The file includes names, phone numbers and addresses of physicians as well as diagnoses, lab tests, imaging studies, and medications.

So when Mostashari took his father to a local doctor, his dad was able to hand over his iPhone and say, "Here's my history."

The entire story is here.

Here is a link to Medicare's Blue Button program.

New designs to make health records easier for patients to use

HHS.gov
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 15, 2013

Winning designs of printed health records to help patients better understand and use their electronic health records (EHRs) were announced today by Farzad Mostashari, M.D., the national coordinator for health information technology. The designs, created through a HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) challenge contest, all met the goal of making EHRs valuable to patients and their family members.

“Patients that are engaged in their health care treatments have better outcomes in their health,” said Farzad Mostashari, M.D., national coordinator for Health Information Technology.  “The design challenge winners all proposed patient-friendly designs that will help to translate technical health information into easy-to-understand information that will help patients work closely with their doctors to manage their care.”
More than 230 submissions to the design challenge were submitted. Winners of the Health Design Challenge include:

• Best Overall Design – “Nightingale” - Amy Guterman, Stephen Menton, Defne Civelekoglu, Kunal Bhat, Amy Seng, and Justin Rheinfrank from gravitytank in Chicago, Ill.
• Best Medication Section – “M.ed” - Josh Hemsley from Orange County, Calif., presented a modern and intuitive design to help patients better understand how to properly adhere to their medication
• Best Medical/Problem History – “Grouping by Time” – Mathew Sanders from Brooklyn, N.Y., aimed to provide more context by listing items in chronological order instead of grouping by functional type so cause and effect can be seen
• Best Lab Summaries – “Health Summary” – Mike Parker, Dan McGorry, and Kel Smith from HealthEd in Clark, N.J., brought life to lab summaries through an aggregate health score and rich graphs of lab values
• The Best Overall Design winner will receive $16,000, while the winners in the remaining categories will each receive $5,000.

The Health Design Challenge supports ONC’s efforts to engage consumers in their health through the use of technology, including the Blue Button, and is part of ONC’s Investing in Innovation (i2) Initiative. The i2 Initiative holds competitions to accelerate development and adoption of technology solutions that enhance quality and outcomes.

"This challenge was unique because it engaged professionals and students inside and outside of the health care industry to participate and propose real solutions," said Ryan Panchadsaram, presidential innovation fellow for ONC." We’ve assembled a showcase of top entries that challenged the status quo and inspired the health community."

More information about the winning submissions and other top entries can be viewed in the online gallery at http://healthdesignchallenge.com . For more information about health information technology, visit:  www.healthit.gov.

The release was posted here.