A dramatic cultural change is happening in the medical record space.

We must be honest with ourselves and admit that so far, 18 years later and over 40 Billion dollars spent, we failed to provide anybody with a unified single complete longitudinal medical record.

The promise that was made in 2004 by Pres. G. Bush in the State of the Union address 1/20/2004 and I quote “BY COMPUTERIZING HEALTH RECORDS, WE CAN AVOID DANGEROUS MEDICAL MISTAKES, REDUCE COSTS AND IMPROVE CARE” the promise was IN THE US, EVERY PATIENT SHOULD HAVE EMR or EHR WITHIN 10 YEARS.

This was a noble goal then, and it is still an urgent need for every American citizen today.

Since nobody has a single unified medical Record the truth must be told – we gravely missed the mark .There are many reasons for our failure. Political, Technology companies, “Vendors”, greed by medical Insurance companies and more.

Now, we must make a major decision. What are we going to do now?

There are 2 options.

The first is spending more good money after bad into the current failed EHR systems (TEFCA). The second is to go back to the original promises made, and actively provide electronically a single complete longitudinal medical record to every American.

In my opinion, the second option is the only way to go. This option means that we must go all the way back to the point where we made the wrong choices. I mean practically to square one. The Covid pandemic brought it to light. It is a painful process but a necessary one, that we must go through. This is our adversity in healthcare and at the same time our opportunity and duty to solve the problems and change.

With this goal in mind, I designed a novel architecture for UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLE PERSONAL MEDICAL RECORDS.

I filed a patent application with the patent office in November 2017, Now it is patent pending #17107389

In short, every baby born will be provided by the medical insurance company a secure “safe deposit box” in the cloud. I call this box – PMR Personal Medical Record. The key to such PMR is a QRcode (or another matrix) Attached to each individual PMR Provided by the current insurance company.

This is a specific QR code . The identical PMR and MedicalPassport will follow until death. Parents will aggregate the records until age 18 when the young man/woman will take over. If they join the military it becomes the DoD medical record and later the VA record. If they go to civilian life they just continue aggregating their personal medical records- Self Care.

“People must be responsible for compiling information about their health and keeping it safe. They need to demonstrate their ability to keep accurate records. It is essential self care.” (@biancaroselaw).

Insurance companies spend (waste) billions of dollars on Double Testing and mismatched records. That is their incentive to pay for storage and maintenance of our records in the cloud. It should be free for the patients. Good customer service!

Insurance companies spend (waste) billions of dollars on Double Testing and mismatched records. That is their incentive to pay for storage and maintenance of our records in the cloud. It should be free for the patients. Click To Tweet

It will be our responsibility to aggregate our own medical records from our physicians, laboratories and imaging during our life and safe-keep them in our PMR. Records are going to be emailed. (or any other digital tool) from all points of care to our email address.

Within a short few years we can accomplish our goal to have EVERYBODY own a single, unified, secure, mobile, updated that is universally accessible, and translated to any foreign language.

Within a short few years we can accomplish our goal to have EVERYBODY own a single, unified, secure, mobile, updated that is universally accessible, and translated to any foreign language.

This is a service that we the people, need and must have in any frame directed by our Federal Government. Besides fulfilling our needs, this innovative design will have very positive effects on our total healthcare.

Health Care = Self Care + Medical Care

The issue is political and not technical. I hope the powers to be in DC will fulfill their promise of Patients First.

If the Gov. is not going to do it the private sector must.

The Cures Act which passed recently and will be enforced on October 6, 2022  started a culture change. This important law allows patients to receive their medical records upon request. Record sharing is pivotal for us to build our complete longitudinal medical records which was the original goal. This is huge and touches everybody. Finally…

I believe that this is the way to engage all patients and improve their medical care.