Skip to main content
NCBI home page
Proceedings of the AMIA Symposium logoLink to Proceedings of the AMIA Symposium
. 2000:151–155.

An evaluation of patient access to their electronic medical records via the World Wide Web.

J J Cimino 1, J Li 1, E A Mendonça 1, S Sengupta 1, V L Patel 1, A W Kushniruk 1
PMCID: PMC2244037  PMID: 11079863

Abstract

This paper describes initial experience with the Web-based Patient Clinical Information System (PatCIS). The system was designed to serve as a framework for the integration of applications that help patients access their electronic medical record, add data to their record, review on-line health information, and apply their own clinical data (automatically) to guideline programs that offer health advice. The architecture supports security functions and records user activities, relieving application developers from concerns about safe information practices and the evaluation process. PatCIS is being used to study the social and cognitive impact of allowing patients to have access to their health records via the Web. To date, PatCIS has grown to include 15 clinical functions and 4 dynamic links to literature (called infobuttons). Eleven patients have been enrolled since April, 1999; five have been active users. Experience shows that the PatCIS architecture supports application integration while providing adequate security and evaluation functions. Initial caution with the patient enrollment process has limited recruitment and, consequently, usage. However, experience thus far suggests that PatCIS has good usability and utility. No adverse events, including undesirable impact on doctor-patient interactions, have been reported. There do not appear to be any technical impediments to scaling up the enrollment to continue to observe patient usage.

Full text

PDF
151

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. A proposal to improve quality, increase efficiency, and expand access in the U.S. health care system. Board of Directors of the American Medical Informatics Association. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 1997 Sep-Oct;4(5):340–341. doi: 10.1136/jamia.1997.0040340. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Bloch S., Riddell C. E., Sleep T. J. Can patients safely read their psychiatric records? Implications of freedom of information legislation. Med J Aust. 1994 Dec 5;161(11-12):665–666. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Cimino J. J., Elhanan G., Zeng Q. Supporting infobuttons with terminological knowledge. Proc AMIA Annu Fall Symp. 1997:528–532. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Cimino J. J., Sengupta S., Clayton P. D., Patel V. L., Kushniruk A., Huang X. Architecture for a Web-based clinical information system that keeps the design open and the access closed. Proc AMIA Symp. 1998:121–125. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Finkelstein J., Hripcsak G., Cabrera M. R. Patients' acceptance of Internet-based home asthma telemonitoring. Proc AMIA Symp. 1998:336–340. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Flanagan J. R., Montgomery R. R. Clinical communication among health providers and systems using Web tools. Proc AMIA Annu Fall Symp. 1997:354–358. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Jones R., Pearson J., McGregor S., Cawsey A. J., Barrett A., Craig N., Atkinson J. M., Gilmour W. H., McEwen J. Randomised trial of personalised computer based information for cancer patients. BMJ. 1999 Nov 6;319(7219):1241–1247. doi: 10.1136/bmj.319.7219.1241. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Miller R. D., Morrow B., Kaye M., Maier G. J. Patient access to medical records in a forensic center: a controlled study. Hosp Community Psychiatry. 1987 Oct;38(10):1081–1085. doi: 10.1176/ps.38.10.1081. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Ridsdale L., Hudd S. What do patients want and not want to see about themselves on the computer screen: a qualitative study. Scand J Prim Health Care. 1997 Dec;15(4):180–183. doi: 10.3109/02813439709035024. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Stein E. J., Furedy R. L., Simonton M. J., Neuffer C. H. Patient access to medical records on a psychiatric inpatient unit. Am J Psychiatry. 1979 Mar;136(3):327–329. doi: 10.1176/ajp.136.3.327. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Stevens D. P., Stagg R., Mackay I. R. What happens when hospitalized patients see their own records. Ann Intern Med. 1977 Apr;86(4):474–477. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-86-4-474. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the AMIA Symposium are provided here courtesy of American Medical Informatics Association

RESOURCES