Some Patients Are Creating Their Own Electronic Medical Journals
The project will let Crohn’s patients with a smartphone track daily digestive symptoms and sleep patterns along with signs of anemia, depression and weight loss that could signal a worsening of the condition, which affects 600,000 Americans. Known as “observations of daily living,” the data will be charted, along with lab results and other measures, to create visual trend lines on a website — and viewed by patient and doctor.
Full article on patients keep medical journals here.
Of course you give up privacy — especially if your records become part of a large data base. You risk loss of privacy no matter what you do.
I assume that, unlike other electronic medical records, patients will actually own the records they create. Right?
I’ve read that a lot of good comes from web sites where patients whith similar health problems compare notes and exchange experiences and ideas.
This is an interesting idea. Taken a few steps further, people could track their health status over the course of their lives with health metrics and blood chemistry logged as they age. We probably store information on our purchases better than metrics on our health status.
I just got my first IPhone this month, and let me tell you: IT’S AMAZING. I have already downloaded a few medical apps (one from my health insurance that lets me track my claims and another called ConScope which is put out by NCN here in Dallas and gives pricing for various medical prodecures).
Considering that I now use my phone no less than 1,000,000 times a day (talking on the phone is actually something that I now rarely use my phone to accomplish!), I don’t see why storing data related to my health would be a problem. Imagine taking pictures of your food and getting a precise read of number of calories, etc and then learning how much and of what food group you need to eat to have a balanced meal. The applications are endless.