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This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if each of us had a complete medical/medication history that was immediately accessible to the physicians

This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if each of us had a complete medical/medication history that was immediately accessible to the physicians/institutions treating us. That doesn't exist now unless you're getting all your treatment/meds from one company/hospital system (Ex: Kaiser). Right now if you (or your spouse/kid) are brought to the ER unresponsive the doc isn't going to know shit about what meds you are on, what you're allergic to or perhaps even why you're unresponsive in the first place... in the case that they do have information it is likely incomplete. It's not the slightest bit surprising this routinely leads to bad outcomes because doctors are guessing. Dr. William Yasnoff (MD & PhD Computer Science) has suggested the concept of "Health Record Banking." Similar to financial banking institutions would compete for the right to host your health data and providers could "withdraw" records and "deposit" records. Your smartphone would be a key portal to access this information securely. I'm not sure what the perfect solution is here but the Hacker News crowd is going to have to be the folks to fix this because government, doctors and insurance companies are not.

akerro 10y ago
>This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if e This problem doesn't exist in 2nd and 3rd world countries and didn't exist in US two decades ago.
- djyaz1200 10y ago
  I'd say this issue gets more severe as the complexity of care delivered increases. The more providers, docs, meds are thrown in the mix the more likely it is that there will be an error. If each of us had realtime records when the doc ordered a medicine we are allergic to their computer system could have a fun little pop up like the Microsoft paperclip guy that said "Hey, looks like you're trying to kill this patient by administering a drug they are allergic to press ok to proceed or X to cancel.
iak8god 10y ago
> This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if each of us had a complete medical/medication history that was immediately accessible to the physicians/institutions treating us. That doesn't exist now unless you're getting all your treatment/meds from one company/hospital system Local / regional Health Information Exchanges and efforts to combine them at the State level are now chipping way at this problem. An example is the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY): http://www.nyehealth.org/shin-ny/what-is-the-shin-ny/ http://www.nyehealth.org/shin-ny/what-is-the-shin-ny/ The main challenges are not technical (though data integration must be a nightmare and is almost certainly being done in a wrong and mostly useless way), but social.

akerro 10y ago

>This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if e This problem doesn't exist in 2nd and 3rd world countries and didn't exist in US two decades ago.

djyaz1200 10y ago
I'd say this issue gets more severe as the complexity of care delivered increases. The more providers, docs, meds are thrown in the mix the more likely it is that there will be an error. If each of us had realtime records when the doc ordered a medicine we are allergic to their computer system could have a fun little pop up like the Microsoft paperclip guy that said "Hey, looks like you're trying to kill this patient by administering a drug they are allergic to press ok to proceed or X to cancel.

iak8god 10y ago

> This is a problem technology could dramatically reduce if each of us had a complete medical/medication history that was immediately accessible to the physicians/institutions treating us. That doesn't exist now unless you're getting all your treatment/meds from one company/hospital system Local / regional Health Information Exchanges and efforts to combine them at the State level are now chipping way at this problem. An example is the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY): http://www.nyehealth.org/shin-ny/what-is-the-shin-ny/ http://www.nyehealth.org/shin-ny/what-is-the-shin-ny/ The main challenges are not technical (though data integration must be a nightmare and is almost certainly being done in a wrong and mostly useless way), but social.