The answer to your medical history being stored electronically and organized is... absolutely NO! In fact, your Personal Health Record (PHR) could be scattered all over town or even throughout the country if you have moved.  This is why President Obama plans to invest $50 million dollars in moving America to electronic health records.

To assemble your PHR, you must collect your medical files from each of your doctors, labs, pharmacies, and hospitals. Then you must sort and decipher the files to piece everything together, which could potentially be hundreds of pages of information. In addition, you must have a good way to store your important information.

Why go though all the hastle of doing that? According to Harvard, "It can let you and your doctors grasp the full picture of your health, instead of seeing a chapter at a time. Having everyone on the same page may decrease medical errors, prevent drug interactions, and avoid unnecessary tests. In an emergency, a personal health record can provide vital information that may not be immediately availible from your doctor or health care providers." (Source: Harvard Heart Letter, January 2009). To drive the importance home, watch a video at NBC Health by clicking here.

If you want the hastle of going through the charts and paperwork, there are several resources that will help the Do-It-Yourselfer's prepare their own PHR. On the other hand, I recommend a service called LifeTrack. It is a Picture ID that is a USB 2GB Flash Drive capable of storing all your necessary medical history and personal files. The most important thing is that a registered nurse will go through your charts, and key all the important information on the card for you. If you choose our personal health record product, simply fill out a release form for your doctors.  Your doctor then sends Lifetrack the charts, and let us do the rest.

See a picture example of the card below:

This LifeTrack card is the size of a credit card, and will fit easily in a purse or wallet. As you can see, the outside of the card has information that could be needed quickly in an emergency, and the inside of the card digitally stores and consolidates detailed information such as:

• Your personal information such as name, date of birth, and height / weight.
• Emergency contacts.
• Blood Type.
• Allergies or sensitivities to medicines.
• Immunizations.
• Health Insurance Information.
• Copies of living will.
• History of your health.
• Any existing conditions.
• Organ donor statuses.
• Significant illnesses from past.
• Hospital Stays / Emergency Room Visits.
• Medications Currently Taking / Dosages.
• Lab results.
• Copies of electronic tests such as X-rays or CT Scans.

With the LifeTrack Personal Health Record product, a registered nurse with the company will take all of your medical files and create your Personal Health Record for you. This is not just scanning the files in, and expecting your doctor to go through hundreds of pages. The nurse will read through the records, and store any important medical history on your card and online database. As a result, you get a card with valuable consise data for your doctors and emergency medical services to use to diagnose your medical conditions much more effectively.

Each time you go to the doctor or your medications change, simply release the information to the LifeTrack nurses. Then, your PHR is revised and your card is updated with a simple download process. You have the most recent information at your fingertips at all times.

There are several online storage systems and other USB cards on the market comparable to LifeTrack, but none use health care professionals to provide only the important information to your doctor. In addition, other cards cannot fit in your wallet and do not have your information printed on the face of the card.

In an emergency, EMS cannot obtain your records from online storage. How will online storage (such as Google Health, WebMD or Microsoft HealthVault) help if you are unconscious or away from the internet? It can't!!

With the LifeTrack card, an Emergency Medical Services team can pop the card into the USB port of their laptop, and know everything that they need to know about you and everyone in your car in a matter a seconds. That is security!

Would you have all the information that you need if your house burned down with your computer and file boxes inside. Chances are...probably not.

In addition to medical information, the LifeTrack card can store wills, insurance information, mortagages, copies of birth certificates, tax returns, copies of social security cards, pictures, or any other information that you want behind a 256 bit encrypted firewall.

Now we are talking about Personal Security and Top Notch Health Care all wrapped into the same card.

To get more information on the LifeTrack Card, CLICK HERE or

Email Jason Blair, MBA at JasonBlairMBA@insightbb.com