To healthcare providers, electronic medical record vendors and an increasing number of patients, the small Blue Button logo indicates a medical record can be downloaded and shared with other healthcare professionals, caregivers and families.
To the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, who assumed responsibility for Blue Button last year, it has become more than an image on a screen. "It's a concrete signpost that shows you what to do to get your health data, and it's also a rallying cry for those in favor of increased patient engagement," says Lygeia Ricciardi, MEd, director of the Office for Consumer eHealth at ONC
The Department of Veterans Affairs was the first to use the Blue Button in 2010, adding a logo featuring a blue button to My HealtheVet, the departments' medical record system. The logo indicated participant's basic health information was available for download.
"Soon, other departments began to pick it up, and then folks in the private sector began to adopt it as well," says Ms. Ricciardi.
Over the past year, ONC has worked to promote the Blue Button movement as well as the Blue Button logo among providers and vendors. Currently, 450 organizations have signed a pledge to use Blue Button to make patient data more accessible, easily downloadable, and useful to patients.
To this end, the ONC is "making Blue Button more usable from a technology perspective," says Ms. Ricciardi, describing guidelines released by her office on how to structure clinical data from EMRs for download, and how to transmit them to a location of the patient's choosing.
Since the guidelines, called Blue Button Plus, were released in January, a number of organizations have begun work on implementing them. "Many of the major health plans — Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Humana, the Blues — have taken significant steps to make patient data available with Blue Button," she says. The Department of Veterans Affairs and EMR vendors such as Cerner and Greenway have already adopted Blue Button Plus. Hospitals are not far behind: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is currently using Blue Button Plus in its electronic health record system, she says.
"We're also getting the word out to consumers," Ms. Ricciardi says. Groups like the AARP are working in partnership with ONC on focused publicity campaigns to raise patient awareness of Blue Button, she says.
The expansion of Blue Button to hospitals will have a significant effect on patient care, says Ellen Makar, MSN, RN-BC, CPHIMS, CCM, CENP, a senior policy advisor in ONC’s Office of Consumer eHealth. Blue Button "gives patients access to information they can use to take action on health issues. This in turn changes the way patients think about their health, and it does assist in putting patients at the center of their healthcare team," she says, as patients can track medications and appointments, as well as download and share their medical information with others.
Both Ms. Makar and Ms. Ricciardi also expect to see a wider adoption of Blue Button this fall. "As meaningful use stage 2 rolls out, we expect to see a lot more providers participating in Blue Button," says Ms. Ricciardi, as Blue Button fulfills the requirement for patients to be able to access and share their health data in EMRs.
More progress and new initiatives surrounding Blue Button will be unveiled by ONC and HHS September 16th at the 3rd Annual Consumer Health IT Summit in Washington, D.C., part of national Health IT Week."We'll be showcasing some direct consumer engagement efforts we've been working on," says Ms. Ricciardi, based on focus groups and national surveys coordinated by the ONC over the past year.
The summit will be a time for ONC to share new programs and initiatives, as well as celebrate the successes of the public-private community that is part of the Blue Button movement. "We've really been seeing the benefit of having informed, engaged patients," says Ms. Makar. Blue Button "represents a step forward in a patient's relationship with providers," she says, "and consumers and patients will begin to see some very exciting innovations come as a result."
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