Many of us find it annoying when, each time we visit the doctor’s office, we’re handed a clipboard and told to fill out all of our medical history. So the Trump Administration has announced a plan to “Kill the Clipboard” and replace it with modern technology. However, the move carries a number of privacy concerns.
At a White House gathering, President Trump, along with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, touted the plan to simplify sharing health information with any doctor or pharmacy.
“Today, the dream of easily transportable electronic medical records finally becomes a reality,” President Trump said.
As part of “Making Health Technology Great Again,” the government health leaders appeared alongside 60 CEOs of America’s top tech firms, including Google, Amazon, Apple, and OpenAI.
“Instead of filling out the same tedious paperwork at every medical appointment, patients will simply be able to grant their doctors access to their records at the push of a button. Just a button, and you’re all set, and all the information the doctor needs will be immediately transmitted,” President Trump said.
The plan involves private companies’ smartphone apps storing your complete health history, which would be instantly shared by scanning a QR code, much like the boarding passes used to board planes.
Secretary Kennedy said the information stored can have as much information as the patient allows. “Your height, weight, your blood type, your BMI, your cardiac markers, your diabetes markers, your cholesterol, and any individualized treatments that you’ve had,” he said.
Those in the medical field agree it’s time for an upgrade to America’s outdated health information sharing system, one of the few systems that still relies on the fax machine.
Dr. Andrew Straw, a pharmacist and associate professor of pharmacy practice at Cedarville University, told CBN News the outdated system means health care providers often don’t have access to important medical data about their patients.
“I don’t always have information from a recent hospital visit,” he said. “If a patient goes to the emergency room, they may not be able to get care started as soon because the providers don’t know what they’re taking, if maybe you come in and you’re not conscious. So there are things that we would love to fix.”
The proposed health apps would involve voluntary participation from both patients and providers. They would not be linked to any centralized government database.
In addition to storing our health information, the apps would take it a step further by using AI to interpret the data and offer personalized advice about diet, medications, exercise, and more.
White House Crypto Czar David Sacks said the apps could lead to improved health. “The key here is the unlocking of the data because the more data that AI has, the better it performs,” he said.
Kennedy said the apps could prove especially effective in fighting diabetes and obesity.
While this tech sounds good, a number of privacy concerns exist. Some question whether the apps will violate the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.
It’s also unclear whether security can be guaranteed, something very important to many Americans when it comes to their personal, sensitive health information.
“If this system were to share doctor’s notes and you had a certain medication or you had a diagnosis that was more private to you, or you had clinical notes that the doctor had written that would reveal information about your progress, those would be things that most of us wouldn’t just be sharing just all over the place,” Dr. Straw said.
Worries include insurance companies possibly discovering information and using it to increase rates or even cancel policies.
So while many Americans would love to ditch the clipboard, privacy concerns could be a deal breaker.
