Seems absurd that if everything is digital now, we still have to fill out paper forms every time we visit a new doctor’s office, and it's difficult to get a digital copy of results. Inconsistent protection without much added convenience.
I think there's a huge opportunity for some sort of app that gives the customer/patient visibility of their data during its entire lifecycle and gives them controls to revoke access, delete data, etc. (Kinda like I can revoke an OAuth token.)
Putting the patient at the helm has a few wonderful effects -- among them: all of the red tape around transferring patient medical records from one doctor/institution to another pretty much disappears. They're all about making sure the patient's private data doesn't go to someone the patient wouldn't want to see it. The only reason they need all of those laws is because the patient isn't even in the loop, normally.
We have the core webapp UI; we also have a REST/JSON API for letting apps (and third parties) work with the patient's data (if given permission, of course).
It's a really interesting space to be in. (I'm sure reading the about raises lots of "but what about when" questions; we have answers ...mostly!)
Edit: I should have said: that's what we're doing w/ medical records (not with financial data)
1. Which doctors and insurance plans does PatientsKnowBest work with?
2. Where is my data stored? What happens if I decide to stop using PKB?
I should add that I didn't want to spend the time to watch the 20 second videos, but perhaps I'm not the kind of customer you're trying to capture at the moment
Have you heard of RHEx (http://wiki.siframework.org/RHEx, https://github.com/project-rhex/simple_rhex)? It's an open source implementation of hData (http://www.projecthdata.org) and provides a RESTful, secure way to transmit patient data.
There's no reason it has to be on paper, though...
That way it looks like crap by the time it gets back to you.
Doctors make purchasing decisions. They're very conservative. Younger doctors embrace the computers. So it's just a matter of the old guard retiring.
Who pays? A paper medical record is fine for a clinical practice. Electronic records are good for interchange. But that doesn't help the doctor or the hospital. The early adopter hospitals of our RHIO system were motivated by attracting their area doctors, so used our system as a loss leader to encourage admissions.
EHRs suck. Huge. Imagine a whole universe of suckage and multiple it by infinite suckage. They're expensive, super complicated, and have no ROI. If it weren't for the federal push for electronic medical records, the carrot of block grants and "meaningful use" stick to punish non-participants, no one would adopt an EHR without a business case.
It's not easier to steal a person's records when the documents are digital. Especially if it's done properly (the storage, the privileges, the interchange...)
What's easier in the digital case, that I will concede, is to steal the entire filing cabinet. It's easier to steal a piece of paper than to do either of these other things; breaking encryption to access the records once you've stolen the entire filing cabinet, or gaining unauthorized access on a system that is supposedly audited and access controlled.
He says that data moves like smells. The only thing is, there are laws that are meant to protect you from having your medical records smelled by arbitrary folks who shouldn't / snoops with no right to do it.
I do not expect to have my medical records performed in a public setting by third parties, and I would not accept any amount as compensation in the form of royalties if they did. Those people should go to jail!
I have no argument with Paul Graham's position on smells and data. There's a difference between a thing that is sold and published, and a thing that is shared under confidence. That is the whole idea of HIPAA and other data privacy laws.
I am on the fence about copyright in general. That is not what's at issue here.