You’ve just gotten off Space Mountain at Disney World. Your daughter’s thrilled she’s about to shake hands with Minnie Mouse. Suddenly, she starts choking and wheezing. She’s having an asthma attack. You’re thousands of miles from your doctor. Now what?
A company called motherknows.com has now made it possible for parents to have 24/7 access to their children’s medical records by creating an account at motherknows.com. Parents simply approve a medical release form at the Web site, which then allows motherknows.com to receive medical records from doctors. These records can then be displayed on mobile phones so a doctor anywhere in the US can get a child’s history immediately.
The service costs $49 per child per year, or $4.95 a month after a 30-day free trial. Additional children are $39 a year or $4 a month.
The Web site says data is encrypted with hospital-level security and can include your child’s complete medical history, including immunizations and other key healthcare information.
“The product closes the information gap between parents and care providers and helps the parents understand their child’s development from the first days,” says a story at sneakerheadvc.com.
“We had to do it!” said MotherKnows co-founder Hesky Kutscher in a company press release. “There’s so much information that can be accessed ‘easily and instantly’ these days, but medical information hasn’t been among that. But now, we’re giving parents the ability to pull up their child’s entire medical history whenever they want, which is sure to make for much more efficient doctor’s visits, emergency care, insurance conversations – and yes, those dreaded registrations.”
Children’s Health Fund, which describes itself as an advocacy group, has announced that it also is in the process of building a similar Electronic Health Record (EHR) system “customized to serve a vulnerable population in mobile and community-based settings.”
The company announced in July that it had received $1.7 million in seed funding from First Round Capital, with contributions from other venture capitalists, according to a story by Rip Empson.
Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
