AMNews reports that allowing patients to put their own medical information on the internet is becoming big business. The article mentions www.4healthylife.com which has links to health resources (including a way to store your pet's medical information!) and ways to store your own health record.
Personalmd.com takes a smilar approach (sans the pets) … aiming to capture patient (and physician) loyalty by providing a place where patients can collect their records .. even faxed copies of paper charts.
I do expect that this sort of website is going to catch on. It is likely that our patients will be dragging some of us into the 21st century.
I think of the "snowbirds" who are now heading to Florida for the winter. These folks seem to have two sets of docs … and having records in one place .. managed BY THE PATIENT yet accessable to both sets of physicians is an attractive concept in many ways.
The legal questions that arise here are many: Where does the record reside? Which state laws apply to the confidentiality of those records? What about medical decisions that are made based on information that the patient has entered into a website?
