There were many efforts to create portable electronic health record and turn them into personal health record that can be controlled by users. For example, Waltmart and a few companies are doing this thing called: Dossia. I have been working on the similar product: https://www.revolutionhealth.com/my-health-portfolio/. Almost everyone has this grand idea that if we can just store the health record electronically and allow them to transferred between providers and consumers, we will reduce health cost by reducing duplication of lab tests and reducing medical errors.
Sound great in theory. The problem is how to actually convince consumers and doctors to use it. What is the incentive for doctors to spend ton of money to put their patients record online? So that they can easily send their patients’ records to other doctors or their patients… don’t think so. Will electronic health records save doctor money? Not with the existing insurance system. Doctor would get penalize for duplicated tests. Insurance pay for it. Medical errors? Insurance pay for it in case lawsuit. How about patients? Won’t they care? Yes, they care about medical errors but not cost because insurance pay for it. Furthermore, patients are not going to be able to force their doctor put their records electronically. Nor will patient want to enter those data in themselves.
So the problem is not able providing a secure platform to store electronic health record. The problem is that there is no business case for it under the current insurance pay system. Unless all the insurance companies get together and say all doctors might use electronic health record by some dates in the future or the government mandate it. We are not going to see wide use of electronic health record anytime soon.
There is another business case for electronic health record that should worth explore. Providing health assessment, diagnosis and treatment guide based on a person’s health record. However, how to build a business model on it is another tough problem to solve. The key is still how you can convince doctors to spend money on it.