Institute For The Future

Mobile medicine and electronic health records

Thanks to a new application called Life Record, the iPhone is now empowering doctors to provide mobile care to their patients. Life Record provides remote access to electronic records that can include all of a patient's medical information, like insurance cards, history of visits, lab results, X-rays, echocardiograms, etc. It also allows doctors to enter patient notes and to send prescriptions to the pharmacy via the system.

One blog recounts the experience of a neurosurgeon who uses his iPhone and Life Record to prepare for surgery. It also quotes Michael Pike, chief software architect and founder of Life Record, with respect to the potential for patients to take advantage of this technology:

'We do have a product coming out in the next couple of months for regular consumers to manage their health records on the iPhone. Consumers need a different interface than physicians.'

The user interface seems to me to be the least of the potential issues Life Record faces. Widely accessible, secure, compatible, integrated electronic health records are what are going to make a difference to consumers. The time is coming, but we are not there yet.

 

Life Record's Pike, who made a tutorial video available to doctors on YouTube, notes that the video has attracted more attention from consumers than from doctors. "'The iPhone has kick-started the idea that consumers can have health care information in the palm of their hand.'"

 

Life Record's home page has a button labeled "Patient." Clicking on it lead to the following screenshot:

While I like their product tag, " My Life Record - Your Life, Your Medical Record," I think the phrase "The World Is Changing" is even more telling.