Keyose Blog - Personal Health Records

Advance health care directives are instructions given by an individual specifying what should be done for his or her health in case he or she is no longer able to make decisions. These are legal instruments that are usually witnessed or notarized.

These directives are very important in case you (or someone under your care) are unconscious or have an advanced dementia. It is stored in a legal or offical repository (notarized). It uses to include the five wishes:

1. Which person you want to make health care decisions for you when you can’t make them.
2. The kind of medical treatment you want or don’t want.
3. How comfortable you want to be.
4. How you want people to treat you.
5. What you want your loved ones to know.

A user have suggested us that Keyose could be a good place to store your  advance directives. Of course as Keyose is anonymous its legal value on those questions is close to “zero”. But as a doctor I think it could be a good idea to do the following:

- include your advance directives in your Keyose record (but never include identificative information about you in the record… that is very important for your privacy!)

- include some brief information about how to obtain the legal document or the telephone number of your representative in your Keyose card. It will help the healthcare profesionals to obtain that key information faster.

Of course be aware of the privacy threats of your Keyose card in this issue. In case someone steals your Keyose card containing personal information about you (or in a wallet with other personal identificative documents) he will be able to access to the public area of your personal health record, that is accesible with your public password (very important in case you are unconscious), but never to your private one protected by your private password that only you know and is not printed in your card.