“Empower your patients with Health Records on iPhone… Engage your patients in their own health…From EHR to their iPhone, in a few simple steps.” These claims are peppered throughout Apple’s announcement page for their new Health Records feature of the Health app. What is Health Records and what does this mean for the future of electronic health records and clinical trials?
Apple’s Health Records – what’s all the fuss about?
iPhone users at over 100 hospitals and clinics in the United States can now access portions of personal medical records through the Health app. Medical information accessible for patients at the 39 health systems currently working with Apple includes allergies, vaccinations, lab tests, vitals, medical conditions, and procedures. Some healthcare groups already offer the ability to access medical records via mobile device or computer, but Apple aims to collect multiple existing systems into one application.¹
Easy access to medical records could promote better health outcomes, allowing patients to catch errors (e.g. inaccurate weight, allergies, etc.) which could alter prescribed medications and dosages. Medical errors have been linked to poorly designed electronic health records (EHRs)², making Apple’s entry into this space all the more intriguing. Can Apple, one of several “nontraditional” players entering the healthcare industry these days, solve some of the problems currently impacting EHR systems and improve patient outcomes? How could this technology impact clinical studies?
From EHR to clinical studies, Health Records could reach wide
FierceBiotech features an interview with Joe Dustin, Principle of Mobile Health at Medidata Solutions, discussing how Apple’s new Health Records application could quickly drive chance within clinical studies. Health records have been used by the research community to identify clinical trial sites and potential participants, but they “have had a bad reputation in the technology industry as the place good data goes to die,” Dustin comments.³
Apple’s solution allows significantly more healthcare data to become exchangeable and machine-readable via its Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards backbone. As the first mainstream company to utilize FHIR, Apple could create a mimic effect among competitors. Dustin notes that “this will not only help funnel patients to clinical trials, but it will help qualify them based on data standards… if patients can download their data, they will share their data.³ This could also open up the door for sponsors to directly contact patients if data is voluntarily shared through new channels that circumvent traditional recruitment methods.
Health Records could also catalyze virtual trials that use digital tech to complete portions of a clinical trial at one’s home or physician’s office instead of a traditional trial site. “As clinical trials become more virtual, sponsors will be able to ‘dial in’ what capabilities they want virtualized… this new Apple feature will enable new capabilities that were not possible before,” Dustin concludes.³
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¹ https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176740/apple-health-records-app-ios-update