Medical Informatics Goes with Indiegogo for Funding

Medical Informatics, Inc and Health Tech Hatch (Hatch), have launched the “My Medical Records” Project crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The vision is of “One Patient | One Number | One Card” aims to unify health records from different providers, irrespective of whether they are paper-based or electronic, and give access to those records to the patients themselves. Organizers hope to raise $100,000 on the Indiegogo flexible funding campaign.  The funding will be used to develop and showcase an open-sourced portal for generating unique identifiers for all patients, using innovative technology combined with a broad-based grassroots support from patients and providers.

Patients should have instant and complete access to all of their own health information. In the age of computerization, anything else would be archaic like using a paper map or flipping through a phonebook to look up a number.

Designed to bridge the divide between patients and providers and give control of health records back to the patient, the campaign was launched by a group of doctors who joined forces with entrepreneurs, key stakeholders, legislators and other business leaders. The “My Medical Records” Project promises to deliver on open-source software it will use to generate a unique Health Security Number, also known as a unique patient identifier (UPI). Patients will receive a physical Health Security Card imprinted with the UPI that can be used to tag records produced from any service or encounter, data that are then stored on a secure, cloud-based platform.

“We see facilities struggling to improve the interoperability of their existing technology by reaching out to their community providers, but what we don’t see is the patient voice in the discussion on how to piece together the fractured landscape of today’s medical informatics,” said Dr. Steve Behram, President of Medical Informatics, Inc., who is also a practicing OB/GYN and one of the project organizers. “The ‘My Medical Records’ Project is our attempt to give a voice to the needs of patients in this conversation while supporting a true patient-physician partnership that will result in fewer medical errors, less redundant testing and improved quality of care.”

The Project empowers patients with their own Health Security Number, which they can use in every healthcare transaction to generate one continuous unified record accessible by the patient at any time using a smart phone, tablet, Mac or PC. By using this card-based approach, patients can seamlessly move from one provider to another and from one facility to another, and still enjoy a single integrated virtual health record. It’s a patient-friendly approach where the health record follows the patient, and not the other way around. This approach also avoids the pitfalls associated with a national identification card or a centralized database of medical record numbers.

Medical Informatics, Inc. is a Maryland-based company incorporated in 2003, with the mission to improve healthcare by improving distributed decision-making. Health Tech Hatch has partnered with Indiegogo and is a platform supporting healthcare innovation.