Keyose Blog - Personal Health Records

As described recently in the medical journal Family Physician adverse drug events are common in older patients, particularly in those taking at least five medications, but such events are predictable and often preventable.

About one in three older persons taking at least five medications will experience an adverse drug event each year, and about two thirds of these patients will require medical attention. Approximately 95 percent of these reactions are predictable, and about 28 percent are preventable.

Keeping a well organized and updated record of the current medications of a patient is a key element to minimize those events. Keyose is an unvaluable tool when dealing with that task.

With Keyose you can update the list of treatments quickly (close to real time). You and your doctors will be able to access to that information from everywhere.

Therefore, the Medications section in your Keyose health record is very important, specially when you take more than 4 drugs.

It is recommended to review and update the list of your medications each 6 months, and everytime you change or introduce some new treatment or a new disease is diagnosed.

A medical researcher, Hamly, described in 1995 a set of simple questions you should ask to your doctor each time you review the medication list with him:

1. Is the indication for which the medication was originally prescribed still present?
2. Are there duplications in drug therapy (i.e., same class)? Are simplifications possible?
3. Does the regimen include drugs prescribed for an adverse reaction? If so, can the original drug be withdrawn?
4. Is the present dosage likely to be subtherapeutic or toxic because of my age and renal status?
5. Are any significant drug-drug or drug-illness interactions present?

The Keyose’s team hopes that our tool serves to minimize drug adeverse effects for you and your family.

Two in five (42%) adults keep personal or family health records, that is “one place where you keep all your medical records with the results of all your medical tests and details about prescriptions, vaccinations, treatments, known allergies and other health care information.” Almost every one (84%) of those who do not keep health records think it would be a good idea to do so.

At the moment, only a small minority (13%) of those with health records keep them electronically but many people – 40% of all those who do not have electronic medical records – think it at least somewhat likely that they will do so.
These are a few of the results of a nationwide survey by Harris Interactive of 2,242 adults who were surveyed online between July 12 and 18, 2004.
Other interesting findings include:
• Women (45%) are slightly more likely than men (38%) to keep personal or family medical records.
• Older people are more likely than younger people to keep personal or family medical records. Fully 58% of people over 65 do so.
• Among the many “good reasons” for keeping personal or family medical records are:
- The ability to provide doctors with useful information (78%).
- The ability to look back and recall what care was received (78%).
- The ability to have access to the record in case of emergency (77%).
- To help ensure the proper use of prescription drugs (54%).

The biggest concerns people have about keeping medical records are possible threats to one’s privacy (68%), and security (66%). Many, but far fewer, people are concerned about possible errors (37%), that critical information won’t be accessible in an emergency (37%), or that they won’t be able to keep their records up to date (33%).

For that reason, privacy and security have been the main concern of Keyose’s team from the beginning of the project.