Digital-health

The “Health Records (Clinical Documentation)” feature within the Health application is now available to users in the UK and Canada. With it, users can securely view and store their medical records directly on their iPhone.

Oxford University Hospitals and Women’s College Hospital are among the first healthcare institutions in the UK and Canada to make this function available to their patients. In the United States, more than 500 institutions with more than 11,000 care centres support this function.

Previously, patient records were stored in multiple locations, requiring patients to access the website of each health care provider to manually collect information about their health. Health Records creates a direct link between medical institutions and a patient’s iPhone, allowing users to have a central view of their allergies, conditions, vaccinations, laboratory results, drugs, procedures and vital signs in different institutions, and to be notified when their data is updated.

“We designed Health Records on iPhone to empower people to easily view their health records at any time, and we are thrilled to put this feature in the hands of customers in the UK and Canada,” said Kevin Lynch, Apple’s vice president of Technology. “We believe people should have access to their health information in the most private and secure way, and we have worked hand in hand with healthcare institutions and organizations to put privacy at the center of the patient experience.”

Apple believes that privacy is a fundamental human right, and Health Records is designed to protect patient privacy at all times, using a direct, encrypted connection between the user’s iPhone and the healthcare organization. In addition, all Health Records data is encrypted on the device and protected with the user’s iPhone access code, Touch ID or Face ID. Apple has worked closely with Cerner, Epic, Allscripts and InterSystems to enable integration based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards with the Health application for their UK and Canadian customers.

In the coming months, more medical facilities will connect to medical records and offer their patients access to this function.

For those interested in understanding what Health Records is and how it works, we suggest consulting these pages.