Are You Ready For The ePatient Era?

Written by Greg

There is a new class of healthcare consumers emerging that I’ve been reading about over the last few days. They’ve been dubbed ePatients. With the constant chatter about reducing the expense of healthcare, a logical, and much debated topic has been the subject of patient records. Specifically, the transition to electronic healthcare records.

These “ePatients” are a growing class of healthcare consumers that are pushing their healthcare providers to move toward electronic records, and promote free flow of information directly related to their healthcare. This transition is in line with some of the proposed healthcare reforms in the US, and in fact, the current administration has promoted the deployment of electronic records to every clinician and hospital in the U.S.

ePatients are taking the process a step further. According to the Pew Research Center, ePatients are serious consumers of social media, and routinely use the internet as a resource to research healthcare related issues. These include research on preventative medicine, chronic diseases, diet, and exercise. They’re researching doctors and hospitals, and even sharing very personal healthcare experiences through the use of social media support groups.

As one might expect, I fall somewhat into this category. I’ve explored the use of Google Health and My Health Info, but I haven’t populated my information into these services. While I understand the reasoning for centralized electronic health records, I worry about the potential for abuse. Certainly, Google and Microsoft have made promises to “protect” users data, but the temptation would have to be extremely strong to use that information for financial gain. Providing even tidbits to insurance companies, employers, doctors, hospitals, and drug companies would have to yield impressive financial gains.

The question of ownership and security of healthcare records is one that will have to be addressed as we move into the ePatient era. Under our current model, doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies wield an impressive amount of power over ownership of the patients healthcare records. A movement to electronic records should reduce that power. But the question of security looms as one of exceptional concern.