KEY POINTS
- Health-care software vendor Epic Systems on Thursday announced that individuals will be able to release their health data to apps of their choice, giving them more direct control over their medical information.
- This seemingly simple feat is actually a major technological leap for the health-care sector.
- Epic is one of the organizations that has been helping the federal government establish TEFCA, which outlines the legal and technical requirements for sharing patients’ data at scale.
It’s about to get a lot easier for patients in the U.S. to access their own medical records.
Health-care software vendor Epic Systems on Thursday announced that individuals will be able to securely release their health data to different apps they choose to use, meaning they will have more direct control over their medical information than ever before.
For instance, if patients are using a health coaching app or an app that reminds them to take their medicine, they can choose to import their records directly into those platforms.
All they need are the credentials they use to sign into Epic.
This seemingly simple feat is actually a major technological leap for the health-care sector, and it reflects the beginning of a new standard of data-sharing practices that are set to take shape across the nation.
Epic is one of the organizations that has been helping the federal government establish the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA.
It launched in December, and aims to iron out both the legal and technical requirements for sharing patients’ data at scale.
Health-care data in the U.S. has historically been siloed and difficult to move around.
Clinics, hospitals and health systems can store their information in a variety of formats across dozens of different vendors, and there hasn’t been a trusted nationwide mechanism in place for transporting it securely …
