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Dan Nigrin, MD, MS |
What is the status of the Children's Hospital Boston portal that will allow patients and clinicians to view medical records?
- Submitted anonymously
Children's has started the roll-out of MyChildren's, a secure Web-based portal, for an initial group of patients. It will allow patients and their families to perform online administrative
functions, like making appointment requests, viewing existing
appointments, updating pre-registration information (address, phone or
insurance data) and reviewing bills, with the ability to pay balances online through a collaboration with Bank of America.
In addition, a secure messaging feature will allow clinicians and their patients and families to communicate electronically, in a HIPAA-
compliant way. Message threads can also be selected by the clinician to be stored in the patient's electronic medical record, and are viewable directly within Children's new electronic clinical system.
Finally, MyChildren's will include a personally controlled health record (PCHR) developed by the Children's Hospital Informatics Program, called Indivo (www.indivohealth.org). This technology allows patients to keep an electronic copy of portions of their Children's health record, initially including allergies, heights, weights and blood pressures, growth charts, lab results, and for some programs, school forms, asthma action plans and clinical notes. It also allows patients to add new data to their charts. If patients and their families choose, they can make their Indivo personal health record available to other individuals, including non-Children's clinicians. The technology is open source software, is built on open standards and is completely portable, meaning that if patients move away from the area, their Indivo personal health record can move with them, unlike other personal health record systems, which are based on proprietary infrastructures.
Indivo has been selected by Dossia, a consortium created by some extremely large companies (Intel, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Pitney-Bowes and others) to help create and supply the PCHR that will be supplied to all of its employees, representing millions of individuals.
The MyChildren's system is being rolled out to patients in the Primary Care Center, Endocrinology and Myelodysplasia programs first, with expansion through the rest of the hospital in 2008.
- Dan Nigrin, MD, MS
senior VP and CIO of Information Services
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