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Thursday, November 7, 2002 |
Doctor, my eyes
Went and saw my favorite MD yesterday, Gregg Heatley, who's my ophthalmologist. I've been diagnosed with glaucoma since my mid-thirties, and had a good checkup - while I have damage to my optic nerve, it looks stable. While waiting, I browsed through my old records, looking at Visual Field tests from past years and reading referral letters between my various doctors. I feel comfortable doing this, they're my records and from the start he's encouraged me to stay informed. On my first visit, he helped summarize things for me by letting me listen as he dictated his letter back to my referring doctor at my HMO, an action which shocked the heck out of a friend who was going through a medical residency at the time, at an institution which was more proprietary about patient information.
Ownership of your own information was a theme of Eric Pan's PING (Personal Internetworked Notary and Guardian) presentation at Internet2, also: working on protocols to put the control of your medical record in your hands so you can directly release it to various parties, rather than being locked in to a specific provider because they cannot or will not share your data with a competitor).
