Health IT, Startups

Health IT company wants to make it easier for patients, small practices to access and share EHRs

In a bid to help patients share their medical records with different physician practices and […]

In a bid to help patients share their medical records with different physician practices and give them more control over their clinical information, health IT company BlueHub Health created a portal service. The company launched last year and sees itself as filling a niche between the patient-centered world of portable health records driven by the government blue button program and physician practices.

Physicians who use the service can provide patients with a digital copy of their electronic records. Patients get access to a hub that allows them to view their medical information.

The company calls the Austin-based shared workspace and incubator Capitol Factory home. In an interview at the SXSW Health and Medtech Expo earlier this month, CEO Bryan White said although there’s some overlap with ChartRequest, formerly 5 O’Clock Record, it isn’t a direct competitor. Chart Request allows doctors to receive compensation for fulfilling medical record copy requests, mainly from insurance companies and law firms but also to pharmacists other practices and patients.

BlueHub sells a subscription-based service to providers. It gives them access to myBlueHub patients and their shared information. They can use it to search for a patient and request information from patients and other providers.

White said its HIPAA-compliant service targets small physician practices with less than 10 doctors. It currently has 500 physicians on its platform and hopes to double that by the end of the year. He added that its patient-facing hub went live earlier this month.

Although Health Information Exchanges were set up to make the exchange of patient information easier, the effectiveness of these HIEs varies. “HIEs don’t work. It’s too expensive and providers and payers don’t want to pay for it.”

Although the Obama administration has promoted the Blue Button initiative as a way for people to manage and transmit their personal health records and move closer to sharing patient information, the enthusiasm for it has lagged a bit in the face of competing or overlapping services. The Direct Project, which is a basic way for physicians to transmit relevant information to pharmacists for the purpose of e-prescriptions, for example, has more widespread uptake.

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