Benefits aside, purely from security stand point, This might become vector for bad actors for stealing medical by social engineering.
I wonder if the data will be “accidentally” leaked to insurance company by oxford analytica :p
Patients can now access all their health records digitally
71–80 of 122 posts
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#72I occasionally wonder if it would be the cheaper, sustainable approach to just give everyone an iOS device containing their full medical record in HealthKit and require that all data requests go through your device, where you have full control on who gets access and for how long. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation results in $1 000 per iOS device x 300 000 000 = $300 000 000 000 (three hundred billion). To put…
IOS is the most closed and expensive platform for mobile devices. This sounds like corruption to me.
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#73Don't get your hopes up as to how useful this is. In Australia we have had federal government digital health record capability for something like 5 years now. There was all sorts of moral panic about issues at the time it was mooted - around privacy and so on and was opt in. I saw it as a great idea, as I have chronic health issue and thought it as a useful journal for use by medicos in my ongoing care. However despite having GP (physician) visits and haemotologist visits multiple times a year, and blood tests and even surgical biopsy tests there are no records of these being added. I mention it to my doctors and the boxes are ticked as far as I know on forms. The only things that make it to my record are simple scripted medicines (presumably because they have government reimbursement, through the PBS) and immunisation records such as for COVID and flu. Certainly no effort has been made to scan or digitise any CT records and similar imaging from before the health records system was brought in. So it all seems a bit of a boondoggle and waste of resources.
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#74One big limitation of this standard is imaging data. X-Ray radiographs, MRI scans, PET scans, etc are not part of the USCDI standard V1 that'll be available to US patients. The current story for getting these scans still sucks and isn't close to being actually available to patients in the US. The best you can get is a set of DVD's containing that stuff, if you are lucky. The problem is that the protocol used by imagi…
MRI sets can be pretty big - like 50GB big. So you'll probably be wanting to transfer them with a USB drive in most of the US given the quality of "broadband".
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#75Many of the APIs being used here are also available at a population level. So there's analytics and ml work possible too especially when working through payers and providers, not just patient mediated access. If anyone wants to do something about improving this space i started a whole company around these regulations and APIs. https://1up.health I'm Ricky @ if you want to chat
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#76One big limitation of this standard is imaging data. X-Ray radiographs, MRI scans, PET scans, etc are not part of the USCDI standard V1 that'll be available to US patients. The current story for getting these scans still sucks and isn't close to being actually available to patients in the US. The best you can get is a set of DVD's containing that stuff, if you are lucky. The problem is that the protocol used by imagi…
> But we still aren't very close to being able to see X-rays on our phones.
Patients can and clinicians can too with the likes of Intelerad’s offerings - but there are many others.
New Zealand has a fragmented system but it’s all slowly improving and depending on when and where your imaging was done, you can access it.
Far nastier than DICOM and it’s foibles is HL7 format. The RIS side of things is a cluster fuck and is more of a limitation than the image format.
I’m an imaging tech who dabbles in PACS administration (but is far from expert).
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience is that Doc A sends the thumbnail of the image to Doc B. Doc B is happy that Doc A sent an unusable file because he now gets to charge for a new image. Hospitals track MRIs and other images ordered per doctor, and doctors are under pressure to hit their quota.
Not sure where you got the idea that there are "quotas" doctors have to meet for ordering diagnostic tests. I can't speak for other countries but in the US this is not the case.
Can confirm that in the "socialized" health care system of the UK, the "quota" is more like a "cap" and the optimization done is towards 0 not infinity.
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#78We have had this in Sweden for like 10 years... we have a national BankID for verification though. https://www.bankid.com/en/
Haven't lived in Sweden for 35 years, so not familiar with that. A web search found https://1177.se , is it that?
We also have it in Finland as https://kanta.fi. You can see all your healthcare visits, but only short summaries. Results from examinations are not there. Got the analysis of my last blood samples on paper. But that was a friendly doctor, often you get nothing. I think legally you have the right to get everything, not sure, haven't been ill... But you'd need to request it and there is no standardized way to do so regardless of healthcare provider.
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#79I occasionally wonder if it would be the cheaper, sustainable approach to just give everyone an iOS device containing their full medical record in HealthKit and require that all data requests go through your device, where you have full control on who gets access and for how long. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation results in $1 000 per iOS device x 300 000 000 = $300 000 000 000 (three hundred billion). To put…
That solution assumes everyone has digital skills. The people who most heavily consume medical services are usually older, poorer, disabled, and on the wrong side of the digital divide. Many people lack health literacy or even literacy. How would this scheme even handle forgotten passcodes or device theft? Vendor lock in and giving a trillion dollar corporation the keys to your health record is a bad idea.
In Finland we have online access the health data, tax, social benefits and what not for years. Banks close their branch offices and do their best not to serve customers in the few remaining ones.
But there are about 10% (IIRC) of the adult population who don't even have credentials to any of those services (credentials are either provided by your bank or the SIM card of your phone). Or they don't have / cannot use any device to access online services.
It's a significant problem of discrimination. But typically nobody mentions that, they are all proud how digital the country is.
Re: Patients can now access all their health records digitally
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
Because patients should have the right to decide whether and where their confidential medical data is stored.
Astounding to me that anyone is downvoting this sentiment. I would love to hear some sort of rationale from anyone who believes that individuals shouldn't have the right to control who has access to their own private medical information and who stores it.