Epic Systems Corp has announced to release a digital tool ‘Share Everywhere’ which will allow patients to share their medical records with any health care provider provided they have an Epic EHR. The announcement is seen as a huge step toward the ever-elusive digital exchange of medical information.
Share Everywhere will allow patients to grant access to their medical data to any healthcare providers with internet access, even if they don’t have EHRs. Using Epic mobile app, patients can let any healthcare provider to see his or her previous medical record through a web browser. All provider needs is a computer and internet access. The provider can also add notes to the medical record which are sent to the originating healthcare organization.
David Muntz, principal at health IT consultancy StarBridge Advisors and former principal deputy at HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said
“The advantages are huge from a patient perspective, We used to see wheelchairs moving charts from the car to the office, literally, and this has eliminated that challenge.”
Janet Campbell, Epic Vice President of Patient Engagement said “Patients should be able to easily share their health information with anyone they choose, no matter where they are. Share Everywhere now makes this possible,”
Dr. David Kibbe, CEO of the not-for-profit governance group DirectTrust said “This sounds like a very positive incremental improvement in the use of patient portals in the Epic customer base, but it doesn’t seem to me to be a global solution. The most obvious limitation is that it’s available only to customers of Epic who also have MyChart accounts,”
According to Charles Christian, vice president of technology and engagement at the Indiana Health Information Exchange, Share Everywhere doesn’t quite count as interoperability. “It’s not really moving data around but providing access to it.”
Epic argues that this kind of data exchange does indeed qualify as interoperability and, more importantly, makes that interoperability patient-directed. While expressing his views, Sean Bina, Epic’s vice president of access applications said “Whether traveling internationally, receiving home care, or simply seeking a second opinion, patient-driven interoperability is now a reality even when the caregiver doesn’t have an interoperable EHR,”
Epic’s Share Everywhere achieves the crucial “transmit” portion of the requirement under meaningful use, centering the data around the patient rather than on a single provider and maintaining a patient’s privacy under HIPAA along the way, since the patient is the one moving the information.
Dr. Christopher Longhurst, CIO for UC San Diego Health said “It’s an idea that makes a ton of sense, to put patients in the middle of interoperability,”. But, he also said he’s found that “when you ask the patients, most of them tell you they don’t want to be in the middle.”
Epic’s Care Everywhere—not to be confused with Share Everywhere. Organizations using Care Everywhere exchange two million patient records per day with Epic and non-Epic systems. It is also a member of Care quality initiative of the Sequoia Project, whose framework supports data transfer among its members. Care quality members will soon be able to exchange data with members of the Common well Health Alliance, co-founded by Epic market rival Cerner Corp.
