WASHINGTON — People enrolled in Medicare will soon be able to export their medical records to their doctor or hospital under a program launched Thursday by CMS.
“Right now, our health information still feels stuck in the past,” Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency and a senior adviser at HHS, said in a press conference with reporters. “It’s really frustrating when you go to your doctor’s office and they give you a clipboard to tell every part of your medical history, sometimes when you’ve given it dozens of times before, maybe even in the same office, and especially after 20 years of interoperability work by us. It’s really frustrating that this is still happening.”
“So last July, we announced What we call the Health Tech Ecosystem at the White House, and we have 60 companies that have signed on to come and work with us and promise to deliver solutions in 6 months to a year. “So this is our first real milestone in this work, and so we have practices like Cleveland Clinic, Tennessee Oncology and AtlanticCare that are now live.”
The system allows patients to use an app on their phone that creates a QR code that allows them to share their medical records directly with the provider, he said, “and it goes straight into their electronic health record.” To share records, the patient first uses an existing identity app – such as log.gov, id.me, or CLEAR – to authenticate themselves.
asked by Medpage Today As to how this system compares to a universal patient identifier that would give all doctors access to the same patient’s electronic health records, Gleason said, “That’s really the whole idea, that when hospital “Clear the Medicare website to be able to log in.” Patients use new apps Medicare App Library To create QR codes and transmit their records.
Gleeson was also asked how secure such a system would be and what protections there would be against hacking. “The apps we highlight in our Medicare app library go through a certification process” and they must agree to comply with karin code of conductWhich is “essentially a framework that people have agreed upon as an industry to put privacy policies and data use terms in an easily understandable, usable (format), not in a long, scrollable document that no one reads, but in a workflow, and by default keep things private, so that patients, naturally, are protected.”
Another question raised was whether patients’ information could be used for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All participating companies have agreed to keep their AI in a separate, private location and will not steal patient records or use them for AI training, Gleason said. Additionally, “Part of the Carin code of conduct is that they can’t sell data. It’s all part of the framework we’ve put in place for privacy and security.”
Immediately following the press conference, participating companies gathered in the Great Hall at HHS headquarters to hear speeches from agency officials and see a demonstration of some of the App Library software. “Your work in industry and government to deliver personalized health care to patients is central to our promise to Make America Healthy Again,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. In addition to transferring health records, he said, patients will also be able to use AI and make “better food choices and better health care choices,” based on their own health data from their medical records and wearables.
CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, MD, MBA, explained that “Technology doesn’t work the same way in healthcare as it does in other areas… You’re giving patients access to something they’ve always had because they paid for it – their data – and allowing that data to be exchanged in a more harmonious way.”
FDA Commissioner Marty Macri, MD, MPH, said his agency recently announced draft guidance that “makes it clear when the FDA needs to approve software and when we need to get out of the way – which certainly enables developers to move forward quickly or make investments. Investors love forecasts, patients love forecasts, and scientists love forecasts.”
Additionally, the FDA is also considering cybersecurity for new software, he said. “When we think about new technology, we get excited, but at the FDA, our first consideration is to protect the public. And that’s why we’re developing very, very strong criteria to ensure that cybersecurity is optimized.”
