Join Early Retirement Today
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Apple Health (personal medical records)
Old 09-24-2019, 12:57 PM   #1
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
steelyman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: NC Triangle
Posts: 5,807
Apple Health (personal medical records)

I didn’t find a recent topic on this. I’ve had an above-usual amount of visits to PCP and specialists recently and expect that to continue.

Although I usually (but not always) receive summaries in paper and/or digital format after an appointment or procedure, the data can get unwieldy pretty quickly. I’d like it consolidated in one place for tracking, trends, later review and summarization.

I decided to try out Apple Health in a more thorough way than I had in the past. It’s easy to enter vitals (BP, HR, oxygen saturation, weight, etc) for things that can be measured at home.

I’d learned to link a few apps (nutrition, Fitbit, meditation) to Health and they all work.

I was happy to find that my local large hospital where I go for specialists participates in the Epic system and I enabled syncing of my medical records from there without much problem.

I had no luck with records from my PCP (private practice). They use Athenahealth, apparently targeting private practices. Forget dental practices.

So I have a partial solution but it could be better. I’m not concerning myself with anything related to insurance, just health status and care history.

Is this pretty much the case for most people? A while ago a friend worked on a project (govt funded) to improve medical record systems and told me what a mess it was/is. Now I know what he was up against!
__________________

steelyman is offline   Reply With Quote
Join the #1 Early Retirement and Financial Independence Forum Today - It's Totally Free!

Are you planning to be financially independent as early as possible so you can live life on your own terms? Discuss successful investing strategies, asset allocation models, tax strategies and other related topics in our online forum community. Our members range from young folks just starting their journey to financial independence, military retirees and even multimillionaires. No matter where you fit in you'll find that Early-Retirement.org is a great community to join. Best of all it's totally FREE!

You are currently viewing our boards as a guest so you have limited access to our community. Please take the time to register and you will gain a lot of great new features including; the ability to participate in discussions, network with our members, see fewer ads, upload photographs, create a retirement blog, send private messages and so much, much more!

Old 09-24-2019, 02:12 PM   #2
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
MRG's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 11,078
I had a dose of versed, ketamine, and propofol this morning, so excuse my rant.

I was having a conversation with an EMR records management person and listened to their issues. Wow, a bunch of systems, mostly vertical silos, but the vendors are all working on interoperability[emoji41]. No they're not! Why would I build my own gallows as a vendor? If I build out a substantial portion of information sharing why won't provider X cast my software away when someone does it better, cheaper?( I had weekly doses of this crap at Megacorp).

The way it was described to me, even if two providers are on the same vendor's stack they might not be able to easily exchange data between the two.As an example of this insanity I had to carry two different DVDs 60 miles away because some jackwad can't do a copy of my MRI! Nor can the jackwad build a proper secure server so they could use this newfangled FTP stuff.

Don't get me started on how much data can be lost after 2 changes in the ownership of medical records.

I wouldn't expect the smaller providers to be able to pay up for the magic quadrant solutions, they can't afford it. My uneducated opinion is the smaller players will do more innovative integration as that's their value add.

I think you're way ahead of the curve.
MRG is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-24-2019, 07:12 PM   #3
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
steelyman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: NC Triangle
Posts: 5,807
I just updated to iOS 13.1 and poked around at the changes. On the positive side, the ones related to Health look nice but will take some getting used to.

The basic problem of acquiring external data remains but Watch owners might be better able to judge that since it seems better aligned with the Apple ecosystem.
__________________

steelyman is offline   Reply With Quote
Apple Health (personal medical records)
Old 09-27-2019, 09:51 AM   #4
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
steelyman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: NC Triangle
Posts: 5,807
Apple Health (personal medical records)

A little bit of a bummer: I’m in the process of setting up a new iPad and making sure the apps I use on my iPhone and iTouch are working.

I got to Apple Health and... nothing. I thought it’d be pre-installed on the device and searched with no luck.

I decided not to trust some random Internet post and called the local Apple Store. They directed me to Apple support who spent about a half hour with me. I was surprised they didn’t have a quick answer from some database that could match apps against devices and OS to see what’s available and supported or not. But the support rep was stumped.

She and I tried all sorts of things to get an answer but the conclusion reached is that Health isn’t ready for prime time on the iPad. I’m on some queue to get a final answer (I hope).

I’ve been setting up and using Health on the smaller devices and had hoped to use it on iPad for upcoming doctor visits, especially graphical displays.

[ADDED] Correcting a misstatement in a prior post of mine earlier in this thread: I didn’t link Fitbit to Health, rather an app called “Lose It!” that I use for recording food/nutrition (my weight is fine, no need to drop lbs).

[ADDED] I hadn’t tried to check for Health on MacOS either. I’m running Mojave currently. It doesn’t seem to be available there either. [emoji20]

I don’t know (because I don’t have one) but I think the Watch supports Health as a data source.
__________________

steelyman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-07-2019, 05:46 AM   #5
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso)
Give me a forum ...
steelyman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: NC Triangle
Posts: 5,807
While this doesn’t apply to me (I’m not a veteran), it might be useful to others.

I’ve been using Apple Health a fair amount this year and, while it has its quirks, I think it’s a step in the right direction.

Quote:
Apple and the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Wednesday that veterans can now access their health information on their iPhone via Apple’s health records service.

The move enables veterans to see their medical information in one place and share it with their doctors, even if they seek care from multiple providers. That includes immunizations, medications and lab results, as well as information that they gather from health-tracking apps.

Non-veterans can also use Apple health records, but they’ll only see data if their health provider is integrated with the service. Otherwise, they can access that information via other channels, like their hospitals’ patient record software, but that can be arduous.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/06/appl...h-iphones.html
__________________

steelyman is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Medical records and insurability FlogBlogger Health and Early Retirement 20 04-09-2007 11:43 AM
Doctors now charge for copies of medical records boots Health and Early Retirement 18 12-04-2006 08:47 AM

» Quick Links

 
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:31 PM.
 
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.