There’s a new online tool for storing personal medical records and managing individual health and fitness.
The Mayo Clinic has combined their medical knowledge with Microsoft HealthVault to provide the general public with the Mayo Clinic Health Manager, a free online tool for storing, maintaining, and sharing personal health records, getting reminders for scheduled and recommended doctor’s visits, and tracking and improving individual health.
A Few Things You Can Do with the Mayo Clinic Health Manager
- Electronically share selected medical records and health information with your physicians and pharmacist.
- Medical records and health information from many sources are stored in one location.
- Connect health monitoring devices to your computer, such as blood pressure monitor, and upload the data into your HealthVault record.
- Get reminders for scheduled doctor’s appointments.
- Get personalized recommendations for managing your health.
It sounds good, especially for tracking chronic health conditions and sharing data from health monitoring devices with your doctor. If I had to take regular readings of my glucose, for example, it might be really useful for tracking that aspect of my health over time.
However, I wonder about a couple of potential problems with accessing and entering my personal health data in an online system. First, what about personal privacy related to accessing and sharing information? We’re supposed to read the fine print when signing up for free online services. But it’s usually hard to understand. What about information leaks and unauthorized access to and sharing of information?
The other issue is that not all health care providers use the system. That means I have to enter the data myself. I’m sure to make a typo, and if I can’t read the doctor’s writing or I don’t understand everything in my records then how am I going to enter the data accurately?
Hmm, for now I’ll stick with paper.
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