http://ow.ly/6J4b4
An article by Brian Klein posted on medgadget.com
This article discusses the digitization of health care records, and the push to make them accessible online. As the article states, "Last year, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs launched the Blue Button Initiative in an effort to facilitate veterans’ access to their medical records, which they’d be able to share with doctors or insurers. Medicare, the Department of Defense, and the private sector have since adopted the concept. Earlier this month, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation rolled out bluebuttondata.org, which it hopes will eventually give “all Americans” online access to their health data."
The author discusses the attempts to make healthcare records accessible to individuals, via efforts such as the Blue Button Initiative. The article provides a link to offer further information about the Blue Button organization.
This article is the 2nd part of a series based on comments from U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) CTO Todd Park. Park is quoted in this article as follows: "[People asked us:] “Are you allowed under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the privacy law in healthcare, to give people their own information electronically?” We said, “Yes! That act actually encourages that.” But [that type of questioning] illustrates a lot of the confusion that is out there. So, now more and more private-sector organizations have announced that they are going to Blue Button their data, too."
Additional efforts are referenced as well, "Aetna, at a recent event, announced that it has now Blue Buttoned its personal health record for 10-million people who were covered by Aetna. United Healthcare, Walgreens, and the states of Vermont and Indiana have announced that they were going to do the same thing. PatientsLikeMe, which is a very cool patient website, has said it is going to do the same thing. And, so, it’s starting to spread."
P.S. This can be a very positive trend...so long as the sites can be kept secure for hackers...no easy task these days.
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