stopthedumbing

First off, thanks for taking the time to participate in this IamA session, and wishing you the best as you continue to battle. Also, thanks for helping other folks in similar situations maintain the vital information needed to take the best possible care of them at a time when it's truly difficult to keep track of so much information.

I work in Clinical Informatics and see everyday the usefulness of having the ability to have access to our own medical records. The Meaningful Use initiatives as part of healthcare reform here in the US are really helping in this regard, to ensure that folks do in fact have access to their own medical records for exactly the reasons you mentioned. It's exciting to see how HIE's (Health Information Exchanges) really make a difference when it comes to having the information available from anywhere when you need it most.

Have you tried working with any of the big (or small) EMR companies or even the ONC to give your product a bigger stage? I know they are trying to promote the crap out of the Blue Button, but at this point, anything will help. Since interoperability is such a big problem among the big system, folks can use as much as help as they can get.

I agree.

Yes, the similarities between Mad Max world and Libertarian world are uncanny.

Who runs Bartertown?

Yeah, I doubt any of that will happen among the big 3, not at least until more open source EMR's hit the market and are adopted and implemented properly. If VistA is any indication of open source EMR's-- there is a lot of work to be done. But, eventually, I see it that folks will have an app store for their EMR's and can pick and choose the applications that work best for them, but that's a whole other discussion.

Also, you mention "it's best that we take responsibility to keep our health records safe, accurate, and up to date." I completely agree, and would like to see all hospitals, especially the major hospital systems open up the gates so all users can have access to their medical records. With the amount of medical errors and mistakes that happen in our charts, it's of utmost importance that we have the access to add addendum's to elements of our chart that we may see a discrepancy so that it can be sent back and reviewed and ultimately corrected.

If you haven't heard of her, I suggest checking our Regina Holliday. http://reginaholliday.blogspot.com, specifically http://reginaholliday.blogspot.com/2009/09/dark-willow-and-73-cents.html as I find it very relevant, and have been lucky enough to see Regina present on multiple occasions.