The printer was beeping non-stop behind me.
BEEP….BEEP….BEEP…
I got up to see what was happening.
And then I saw it! It was worse than I had ever imagined!
If you aren’t sitting down please find a place to sit before you continue.
What I found was almost 100 pages of faxes sitting there. When I looked through them half of them were illegible. Some were skewed and parts of the page were cut off. We killed a tree for nothing.
This was a fax that we were waiting for. We didn’t know it would be this many pages. We tried to decipher it but going through almost 100 pages during a busy clinic is not going to happen. Also, the majority of it was not readable.
The patient came for their second opinion thinking that we were up to speed on everything and we weren’t. They were understandably upset. We had to get their history all over again and hope that it was accurate. The doctor called their previous oncologist and got the drugs and doses after the visit so we had something to go off.
This is a common story in healthcare. There is a lot of duplication of work. While the best solution would be to have a common way to communicate healthcare data all across the world, as we do with banking, I am not going to hold my breath. HL7 has been around for some time and it is still not being adopted by organizations. Also, there is a lot of proprietary data that exist that would not work with that.
So I am going to propose something radical. Well, it’s not radical for your photos or notes but it is radical for healthcare data.
We should all be hosting our own servers with our healthcare data at home.
Before you leave. Creating a home server is not as difficult as it used to be. These services already exist. There are companies that sell Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices that you can easily access from anywhere. You can also go the DIY route if you are a little more tech-inclined. Even doing the DIY method has been simplified immensely. There are so many great tutorials and videos out there. All you really have to do is copy and paste.
So let's go over the pros and cons
Pro:
You now have access to your data anytime. So when you tell that story about your compound fracture you can actually show them your x-rays and not just some you took with your phone.
Your data is more secure. I know I am going to have some people fight me on this but hospitals and systems have been getting breached at an alarming rate recently. I would much rather have my data where I know it is safe. You still don’t believe me? Here is a link to the Health and Human Services showing breaches of healthcare data.
You don’t have to rely on others to send your information. I always find it odd about all the hoops you have to jump through to access your own data from a hospital. I understand that it is sensitive in nature but even after you prove to them you are who you say you are there is always something else. And to top it all off you have to pay for it.
Cons:
It will require some work. Your 80-year-old grandparents will not be lining up and setting up their NAS with a smile on their faces.
If not set up properly it can be easy to hack into.
Device failure and lost data if backups are not made.
To me, those can be mitigated by a robust product. The hardware and software already exist, but they are not “healthcare” focused.
There are a couple of ways to approach a product like this. Either you make some software to be installed on already existing hardware. Or you can control the whole ecosystem and create a hardware and software combination.
For me, I would lean toward the software solution mainly because it is faster and more scalable.
Is this really a crazy idea? I’m old enough to remember thinking that the “personal computer” was a crazy idea. Look at us now we have phones more powerful than some computers.
Thank you so much for your support! Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or leave a comment.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn and I am trying to be more active on Twitter. Would really appreciate a follow there!
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I hope you have a great day!