Patients will pay for safe data
By silicon.com
Published: 4 December 2003 14:30 GMT
04.12.03: As the NHS agonises over electronic patient files, two doctors in New York have gone all the way and launched a profit-making website that stores medical records.
People can pay $100 per year to register their medical history at the Medical Registry, including X-rays and other digital images. The information is encrypted and accessible only with the patient's password - stored on a card or bracelet - plus a doctor's ID.
Murray Friedman, CEO of Integrated Medical Technologies (IMT), which provides the service, claims it can save lives. IMT's Medical Edge service already sells prescription drugs to patients, provided they have written approval from their doctor. Both services are available from www.medicaledge.com.
04.12.03: Protecting information is important, as today we're making a point of stressing and in few places more so than healthcare.
A cursory search around the web and it becomes clear that www.medicaledge.com is no longer thriving, at least not under that name. Maybe it went the way of so many other late 1990s ventures. Maybe not.
What we will bet, however, is that over the long term, outsourced patient record keeping could become big business, all over the world. The UK's National Health Service is on the brink of proving itself truly cutting edge or a multi-headed leviathan that can never be properly tamed with IT, so maybe those decisions aren't an issue here right now.
But just as people will 'opt out' for private care, so too will they choose a safe haven for information, if given the chance and if the proposition is deemed good value.
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