“Apple’s initiative to enable iPhone users to securely access and carry their own medical records has continued to expand, as over 75 different health institutions are now supporting it — up from only 12 earlier this year,” Jeremy Horwitz reports for VentureBeat. “The company updated its list of medical partners ahead of a speech today by its Clinical and Health Informatics Lead Ricky Bloomfield, M.D., who offered insights into how the feature works for patients and providers.”
“Speaking at the ONC’s 2nd Interoperability Forum (via EHR Intelligence), Bloomfield said that Apple opted to support an open health data-sharing standard called Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) that notably won’t be final until the end of this year,” Horwitz reports. “FHIR aggregates a patient’s health data from multiple sources, then makes it easy for the user to store, view, and share the data.”
You as a user have complete control over who has access to the data. If you don’t want to share it, it won’t be shared. It stays private on your device until you decide to share it. — Ricky Bloomfield, M.D.
Horwitz reports, “As of this month, the iOS Health Records feature is supported by 77 different health systems representing hundreds of hospitals and clinics across the United States.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: To reiterate: Health Records data is encrypted on iPhone and protected with the consumer’s iPhone passcode. When consumers choose to share their health record data with trusted apps, the data flows directly from HealthKit to the third-party app and is not sent to Apple’s servers.
SEE ALSO:
Deloitte: Apple’s Health Records an ‘inflection point’ for healthcare – June 19, 2018
Apple opens Health Records API to developers – June 4, 2018
This is actually good news for all iOS suers. Old folks like me have more in my medical records than I want to remember. Some younger folks also have major issues that should be in a central location, (My granddaughter is out of town right now visiting a national children’s clinic. Major problems in her history that needs to be available to ll treaters.)
For younger, healthy folks their medical history, even if it only includes vaccinations & allergies. There is also a risk of some drunk driving into your car and sending you to the hospital. It happened to one friend who was DOA at the hospital and another who is now a quad. Others have been better off from accidents., but everyone is at risk.
Wise people will get it and get fit loaded.
No matter how healthy you are, fill in the emergency contact details on the Apple Health App. If you’re involved in an accident or emergency, first responders will be able to rapidly contact your nearest and dearest, even if your iPhone is locked.
If you lose your iPhone and an honest person picks it up, they will also be able to use that same feature to contact somebody who knows you and arrange it’s return.