It may be a no brainer to say medical records are safer online, why would anyone think a paper format is safer than online encrypted data that can be privacy protected in a way that only you can access vs a file in a hopefully locked draw. Yet organizations still use a lot of paper! (Image Credit: Mcmurryjulie/Pixabay)
Paper can be copied faxed, and is vulnerable to natural disasters such as flooding or fire! As a permanent resident abroad it was shocking to see boxes of private information lying around the immigration office, in the presence of immigration officers there was no risk but do they not have cleaners come in at night!
No More Unnecessary Information
So this may not be on the radar of most people, but respect should be given to an organization that has summarized the terms and conditions in an easy-to-use declaration of intent. Perhaps it’s even a mission statement, a statement of a simpler approach! For someone who has or hopes to care for a parent, simplifying access to medical records is a win-win. Established in 2018 by Michael Bloch Forbes under 30, this new business is built to make your life easier. So there is a refreshing overview called, in other words, alongside each long section of their terms and conditions:
“In other words: We tried to make this as simple as possible, but the section headings and “in other words” mini-paragraphs are not actually part of the agreement. You have to read the full Terms.”
This is not just a statement of intent it is a simplification that shows agility, it shows they get how busy we are, and that we want to get a high-level professional understanding quickly. Try reading the complete terms and conditions before using the next website you visit, it’s a chore.
Fraud Monitoring
Let’s imagine your grandmother managed a kind of fraud as she laid in a coffin with a plaque which made her younger than she was. She died after several years of living with Alzheimer’s and what seemed like a lifetime (it was most of mine) with severe rheumatoid arthritis. Living alone, after her husband who walked into the village each day for the paper, left her vulnerable to scams and online fraud. The experts at pillarlife.com have built a solution that would have helped her in many ways more than her medical records being available as needed. Her family being able to access this from their home locations, most over 100 miles away would have given great peace of mind.
Family Sharing For When The Unexpected Happens
Being able to answer a doctor’s questions about a family member’s medications because they have collapsed from your holiday, work, or pulled over by the side of the road might just save lives. Having a secure system with checklists for legal documents makes checking their insurance remotely easy, maybe even pay bills that are due. Our lives naturally have become Global. Many like me live 1000’s of miles away from parents and having a system that enables them to grant access or provide details over the phone would give great peace of mind such as when my mother slipped on the ice a few years back. Knowing her medical records were online immutable, and only available to those she authorized would be a great boon.
Organized or Not Organized
Your grandparent’s lives may have relied entirely on paperwork, perhaps they lived through World War Ⅱ if they did when they got sick who provided the doctors with the essential information, how easy was it for their family to do. What if they didn’t know the details but knew there was a record in their parents’ filing system. How easy is it to get at could they get it in time to make a difference, what if they could not be reached!
Imagine knowing where your extended family’s medical records are, being able to find them on your phone at the hospital. The search for medical data should be simple, instantly accessible even on vacation. Medical records can be very time-critical and access to them should not be via fax. If anuresis is confused with enuresis abroad, it may not be dangerous but may cost valuable time. Having access to the data as transcribed by physicians or hospitals immediately is effective:
- Medications
- Healthcare Documents
- Insurance
- Advance Directive
- Will
Organizing your family’s most important medical information online is essential.
Designed With Your Privacy
Individual privacy is perhaps the most important when considering online medical data and for some, it does not have that feeling. In the last century, it was the bastion of accounting that got rocked by scandals, and we can all see how the misuse of medical information will devastate lives. However, the accuracy of these records overwritten ones is incontestable, but can we say they are immutable. Many governments are now advocating EHR so why do people still have trust issues, is it perhaps why would the FBI need access to my medical records, or more simply is it trust!
The answer it is suggested is for individuals to take charge of this themselves, and they or their families where consent is given are the only ones who can access it. If you have looked at Blockchain or other distributed ledger technology this is more secure than anything before and it can not be changed, it can be updated but the original block will always be there. This means information placed in the system by an individual can only be accessed by a password that only the user has. So when a company states “we don’t want to know anything about it” they really mean, they truly don’t! This in turn means you truly own it.
Security in Mind
In case distributed ledger technology does not feel like enough this online system is designed with multiple layers of protection across a distributed, reliable infrastructure. Nobody but you can access your personal information. Not employees, not the government. No one.
Links are included to help with concerns over security especially for those who still prefer paper, the fact-checking source Wikipedia had deleted its own Layers of Security link so it seems likely this is being updated, except to see facts about distributed ledgers there. It is certain that medical records online are the future, the present even, so the only real question is who should be in control of it, you or someone else?