In this era of patient engagement and the push for interoperability, digital health companies are investigating novel ways to electronically connect disparate networks in order to share data.
But instead of investing in and developing complex infrastructure so physicians can access a patient's data from anywhere, what if patients were wholly and entirely the guardians of their information?
That appears to be the overarching idea of MedKaz, a patient-centric, portable medical record. MedKaz is a 4-gigabyte flash drive onto which patients can upload their medical records and be true stewardships in their care. The portability of the device means patients can take it to any appointment, allowing physicians to access patients' full medical records.
Merle Bushkin, founder, president and CEO of MedKaz, said in a Harvard Business School alumni profile that the state of medical affairs following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 was part of the impetus to develop MedKaz. According to the profile, Mr. Bushkin learned of impacted residents of New Orleans whose paper medical records were destroyed in the hurricane, and many of those residents didn't know the types or names of medications they were on. "Nobody had anything more sophisticated, and it seemed so primitive," Mr. Bushkin said in the profile. "It's the biggest opportunity I've ever seen to do some enormous good and simultaneously create enormous shareholder value."
Mr. Bushkin formed Health Record Corp. to develop and commercialize MedKaz.
To use MedKaz, patients complete a form authorizing physicians to send records to HRC, which converts the records into PDFs for patients to download onto their MedKaz flash drive. The documents are erased from HRC's servers once they are uploaded. Before appointments, patients complete questionnaires on the device, which offers physicians a full health record summary, as well as the ability to generate medication or immunization reports. The physician can upload appointment notes to the MedKaz server, which again HRC creates into a PDF and can be uploaded onto the device.
HRC pays physicians for utilizing MedKaz, which "increases the provider's income and aligns her interest in having access to her patient's complete record with the patient's interest in having his MedKaz updated and current at all times," according to the MedKaz website.
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