Image via Wikipedia
My story about Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault begins with the hypothetical example of someone who is unconscious in the ER, unable to tell a doctor he’s allergic to a medication the doctor is about to give him.
One reader noted that online records wouldn’t really help an unconscious patient because he couldn’t tell the doctor that he had such an account.
It is, of course, true that the patient could not tell the doctor in words, but he can easily alert the doctor by carrying some sort of card that indicates the account.
Indeed, I sort of assumed that anyone who’d make the effort to sign up for such a service (and enter all their data by hand) would make the effort to write a card and put it in their wallets.
I’d probably go so far as to recommend that if you sign up for one of the services, you make such a card for yourself. (Yes, you’ll have to change your password if you lose it, but that’s easy to do and the typical pickpocket probably doesn’t care about your medical records any more than you care about his.)
Update: I just talked to a friend who is a doctor and he said that everyone who is deathly allergic to anything — even if they don’t sign up for an online health site — should write it down on a piece of paper and carry it with them always.
EMTs and ER docs do look for such things when dealing with unconscious patients.
Take our poll: Would you put your health records online?
Popularity: 1% [?]
Entries (RSS)