HIPAA Blog

[ Wednesday, February 01, 2006 ]

 

EMR-Lite: I've noticed a lot of talk lately about "portable" web-based electronic medical records that are set up by consumers to have a cyberlocation where they can list medications they take, allergies, and similar information that would be useful in an emergency. I see this as a distinct direction of EMR (electronic medical record) focus, different from physician offices "going paperless" with entire patient records converted to electronic format. That's the big EMR effort, with programs like VISTA and tons of proprietary systems available and large investments of time and money required by providers to implement them. "EMR-Lite" is really sort of like an electronic Med-Alert bracelet. The patient self-loads information that the patient might forget (How many milligrams of Lipitor do I take each day? What's the name of that green pill I take?) and information that the patient might not be able to tell the doctor if the patient is unconscious (I'm allergic to penicillin), and that information can be accessed quickly if needed in an emergency (a car wreck, getting stuck out of town and unable to get home, forgetting to take your medicine on a trip, being displaced by a hurricane, etc.).

I got to thinking about this when I saw this story on ConnectiCare, and it reminded me about some stories during the Katrina exodus about individuals who were lost without their medical records. Keep an eye out for this trend.

Jeff [12:18 PM]

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