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Health goes digital

In a world gone digital, the health care industry remains hopelessly analog. Every office and hospital backroom is literally stuffed with file folders, and crammed with loose papers covered in mostly illegible handwritten notes.

In a world gone digital, the health care industry remains hopelessly analog. Every office and hospital backroom is literally stuffed with file folders, and crammed with loose papers covered in mostly illegible handwritten notes.

I have no idea what information of mine is out there. I grew up in Toronto, went to university in Nova Scotia, lived in Banff for one winter, and have been in Whistler for nine and a half years now where I’ve visited two different clinics, been to the health care centre a number of times, and have probably seen about a dozen different doctors. I have one specialist in Burnaby I’m seeing for my sinuses, the third specialist I’ve seen in about 12 years.

It’s fair to say that any doctor I deal with only sees a part of my medical puzzle, as pieces of it are literally strewn across the country. Only a doctor in Whitecourt, Alberta could know that I got Beaver Fever in ‘97 while tree planting. Only a doctor in Halifax knows that I got three concussions over a single season of playing rugby badly. I can’t even remember the name of the first doctor who operated on my sinuses in Toronto, removing a tiny sliver of bone that was knocked out of place playing basketball in a high school gym class and that later caused an infection.

I’m not even that sure of my blood type, or what happened to the slight heart murmur that some doctor detected about 18 years ago when I was being cleared to play high school football. I may also be allergic to penicillin, but I’m not completely certain.

To me it makes sense to pull all of my disparate health information together into a single, easily transferable, web-based health file. Health Canada can store it, encrypt it, and make the information available to all the health care providers in the world. Any doctor I visit would have instant access to all of my personal medical details, and I wouldn’t have to spend the first five minutes of any meeting with a new doctor answering the same questions.

The only negative aspect of digitizing health data is the issue of security and patient privacy, but I personally don’t really care what personal information is out there. I have nothing to hide, and most of us have nothing to be embarrassed about. Canadian law ensures that I can get care and insurance even if I do have pre-existing conditions that would disqualify me in the U.S. And let’s face it, if a hacker out there really wants to know that Andrew Mitchell had a mole removed from his back sometime in 1998, then he or she is welcome to the information. Go nuts.

Some people may have some information they’d like to keep private, such as past substance abuse or something truly embarrassing, in which case there should be an option on our health records to indicate that some additional information is available from the doctor or patient on request. Some people may also want to hide conditions when applying for life insurance or a career where there is a physical requirement, but in most cases those organizations will do their own testing and then require you to sign a statement that you were telling the whole truth. You can be fired or have your insurance nullified for lying.

I know some family doctors have started using computers more at work, such as tablet PCs that they can carry around with them, but there’s no real standard for the health care industry just yet. Both Microsoft and Google are competing to create that standard, with Microsoft working on HealthVault for different platforms and security protocols, and Google Health launching its first beta test at the Cleveland Clinic.

As Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet Healthcare noted, both companies are taking different approaches. Microsoft is working with doctors and the medical industry to create a software platform that everyone can agree on, while Google is taking its pitch right to the public. I disagree with Blankenhorn’s assessment that Microsoft’s approach is better at this stage, because the web is really about people power and achieving a critical mass of clients. It will be easier for Google to sign up millions of consumers who are open to web-based medical records than it will be for Microsoft to sign up hundreds of doctors.

In Canada, Health Canada has been developing its own eHealth system since 2000, but has yet to come up with a recording standard that would extend to family practices, or a schedule for any kind of universal implementation. In the last throne speech, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell pledged major new investments in eHealth and “new access for citizens to their health records and medical information,” which could include a web component. However, it falls short of web-based, portable records that could be accessed by doctors outside of the province, and outside of Canada in an emergency.

It shouldn’t be that difficult. Facebook has only been around for about two years, and already has about 35 million members — about the population of Canada. A Canada Health web portal, accessible by patients and doctors through a system of passwords and security walls, could be up and running in no time. It will make doctors and hospitals more efficient, give patients greater freedom and choice, prevent against fraud (if photos are included in the records), and, if used properly, could save lives. Every doctor and pharmacist who treats you will know about your allergies, your pre-existing medical conditions, what medications you are or were on recently, your blood type, what scans and tests you’ve had, and even your genetic disposition towards different diseases and medical conditions.

What’s more important — keeping your information private, or making your information available to the people treating you?

So, who wants to hear about The Broken Femur of 1978? or the Great Ear Infection of 1983? My records are wide open.