Health & Well-Being
BY JOHN D. HALAMKA, MD

Your Medical Information in the Digital Age
The U.S. is moving toward electronic health records. Here’s how to make that work for you. for granted that you should manage your own résumé. After all, it catalogs your professional history and accomplishments – who else would manage it well? But chances are you don’t oversee your own medical records. Until now, doing so has been difficult because bits and pieces of your information are probably scattered across the files of several doctors, hospitals, labs, and pharmacies. That’s an inconvenient – and potentially dangerous – state of affairs, but one a new federal law may help to remedy. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is providing about $30 billion to improve the exchange of health care information. One trickle-down effect will likely be greater access to your lifetime medical information through a personal health record in electronic form. The underlying idea is simple:
YOU PROBABLY TAKE

Compiling your medical data in one place lets you be the steward of your health information. Like first writing up a résumé, creating a personal health record takes time, but there are several payoffs. Having the record can prevent unnecessary testing and treatment (and, in turn, save you money), reduce the chance of a medication error, and instantly provide vital information in an emergency. It also can be used to keep track of your weight, blood sugar, and much more. (For a list of the minimum information that your record should contain, see the sidebar, “Tracking Your Health.”) So far, four types of electronic personal health records are available: ■ Hospital- and clinician-hosted records are great if all your information resides at a single institution. One example is PatientSite, used by more than

40,000 patients of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to