Mobile App Connects Patients to Epic EMR

Stanford Health Care has launched MyHealth, a mobile app connected to the Epic electronic medical record system. The app is designed to make it quick and simple for patients to manage their care right from their smartphones, including reviewing test results and medical bills, managing prescriptions, scheduling appointments and conducting video visits with a Stanford physician.

The MyHealth app also supports Stanford’s new ClickWell Care, which delivers the services of a Stanford primary care physician online, combined with customized wellness coaching from a dedicated Stanford Health Care certified personal trainer, plus an online review of home health data.

Mayo Teams with Google

Mayo Clinic has teamed with Google to improve search results on health-related topics. One in 20 Google searches is for health-related information. If you’ve Googled the flu or pink eye recently, for example, you might have noticed a dramatic new addition to the search results.

With the expansion of what it calls a “Knowledge Graph,” Google’s medical results now include a high-quality illustration from licensed medical illustrators paired to clickable tabs with relevant medical facts, symptoms and treatments — all reviewed by clinicians at Mayo Clinic.

Empowering Patients

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania are part of a multisite study allowing patients to add notes to their electronic medical record.  Following theOpenNotes initiative — which lets patients read their physicians’ electronic medical record notes — OurNotes will initially focus on patients with chronic health conditions.

Researchers envision a range of opportunities, from patients adding a list of topics or questions they’d like to cover during an upcoming visit, creating efficiency in that visit, to inviting the patient to review and sign off on notes after a visit as a way to ensure that patients and clinicians are on the same page.