Christina Farr, CNBC:
Imagine turning to your iPhone for all your health and medical information — every doctor’s visit, lab test result, prescription and other health information, all available in a snapshot on your phone and shared with your doctor on command. No more logging into hospital web sites or having to call your previous doctor to get them to forward all that information to your new one.
Apple is working on making that scenario a reality.
And:
CNBC has learned that a secretive team within Apple’s growing health unit has been in talks with developers, hospitals and other industry groups about bringing clinical data, such as detailed lab results and allergy lists, to the iPhone, according to a half-dozen people familiar with the team. And from there, users could choose to share it with third parties, like hospitals and health developers.
This day can’t come soon enough. The sharing of medical data, in a safe, secure, and privacy respecting manner, is a space ripe for disruption. Apple is the right player to make this happen.
This sounds great, but realistically, the economy of this information will be a huge obstacle. There’s a lot of money moving around for sharing or not sharing this information. For instance, some companies feel that if they pay for a drug test or physical to determine your employment eligibility then they own the results. If you want the results for any reason, you have to pay the testing facility for them.
If there’s any ‘one’ body I would trust with all this info, its Apple. And if they can actually pull it off, then it would be a HUGE convenience for all parties.
I’ll second that to add that I’d much sooner trust Apple with the data than, say, a practitioner that stores hard-copy patient records in an unlocked basement boiler room.
Related: anyone want some unredacted dental x-rays?