BBC medical records story

[Peter Gutmann]

Pete Chown <Pete.Chown@skygate.co.uk> writes:

>David Hansen wrote:
>>Nearly seven out of 10 (69%) said they would be willing to have the
>>responsibility of producing the records on visits to their GP or a
>>hospital.
>
>What about people who lose them?  This sounds completely unworkable.

I was wondering when someone would bring this up.  I've worked with companies
who do patient medial record processing software, and every now and then
someone comes to them with a sales pitch about the wonderful new idea they've
had where patients will carry their own medical records around with them on
[smart cards|USB tokens|PDAs|whatever's fashionable at the time].  SOP for this
is to politely see them to the door, then laugh about it during lunch.  The
tokens will get lost, they'll be damaged, the person will be at the doctor's
(or, worse, in the emergency room) and the token is at home or in the office,
the token reader won't work properly, etc etc etc.  This idea is a complete
non-starter, as several organisations who have tried it in the past have
already discovered.

Peter.