Dear tgh,
There are many methods by which a patient can have access to his
medical records.
There is Automated Telephone System. The doctor feeds the lab results
etc. in it and patient,after giving his medical record no., retrieves
his medical records.
A patient can also have his medical records via the nurse (registered
nurse).
A patient can also have his medical information by directly contacting
doctor on the telephone.
There is yet another way i.e. Nurse Practitioners. They work under
doctor`s supervision.They also prescribe medicines and can order lab
tests.
The Internet is already changing the doctor-patient relationship.
Patients are tapping the Internet for medical information and,
increasingly, come to their appointment armed with information and
sophisticated questions. A June 1999 Harris Poll found that 70 million
consumers had gone online in the previous 12 months to look for
health-care information. Meanwhile, doctors are increasingly using the
Web and e-mail to communicate with patients. A study by Healtheon
Corporation, for example, showed a nearly 900% increase in regular
Internet usage by physician between 1997 and 1999, and that 33% have
exchanged e-mail with patients.
Then there is Web-based Patient Clinical Information System (PatCIS).
The system was designed to serve as a framework for the integration of
applications that help patients access their electronic medical
record, add data to their record, review on-line health information,
and apply their own clinical data (automatically) to guideline
programs that offer health advice. The architecture supports security
functions and records user activities alleviating the application
developers from concerns about safe information practices and the
evaluation process. PatCIS is being used to study the social and
cognitive impact of allowing patients to have access to their health
records via the Web. To date, PatCIS has grown to include 15 clinical
functions and 4 dynamic links to literature (called infobuttons).
Eleven patients have been enrolled since April, 1999; five have been
active users Experience to date suggests that the PatCIS architecture
supports application integration while providing adequate security and
evaluation functions. Initial caution with the patient enrolment
process has limited recruitment and, consequently usage. However,
experience thus far demonstrates that PatCIS appears to have good
usability and utility. No adverse events, including undesirable impact
on doctor-patient interactions, have been reported. There do not
appear to be any technical impediments to scaling up the enrolment to
continue to observe patient usage.
"MedicaLogic,Inc." has announced it's "98point6" consumer healthcare
web service, making it the first company to offer patients
personalized, private & highly secure access to their
physician-created medical records. It currently allows patients to
review data from their official records, find authoritative health and
medical info. related to their conditions and interest& will soon give
them the ability to make online appointment requests, obtain
prescription refills, ask questions of their physicians, & see an
audit trail of all individuals who have had access to their patient
record.
Addl. links:
HIPPA implementation resources
http://www.lpf.com/hipaa/background.html
Search terms used :
devices doctor patient medical records.
Hope this helps.
Warm regards,
Solutionpro_ga. |
