electronic health record

VA Officials Chart Expanded Vision For Blue Button

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What began as a simple way to help veterans view their personal health information over the Internet is continuing to snowball into an electronic health record phenomena known as the Blue Button, now used by more than a million patients nationally and gaining wider adoption by certain health care providers.


The Blue Button is a simple piece of software code that the Department of Veteran Affairs developed two years ago, that lets veterans obtain a copy of their medical information electronically.

VA and health industry officials are now exploring ways to expand its adoption, as well as the types of information patients can access.

At a recently concluded consumer health IT summit, Peter Levin, chief technology officer for the VA described how the Blue Button got started and the impact it has had since in serving veterans.

But he and Dr. Farzad Mostashari, who leads the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, also highlighted their vision to grow Blue Button’s user base from “from one million to 10 million to 100 million to the entire country.”

“We want to turn the Blue Button from a noun, to a verb,” said Levin, to a “thing that you do…when you see the Blue Button, you know…you’re going to get your health information.”

Mostashari said he expects immunization records to be accessible via Blue Button in the coming weeks.

But he and Levin said they hope to avoid having distinct types of records added individually.

“You don’t want to do this one at a time,” said Levin. “You’d like to have a methodical way, of not just (adding information) inside government, but most important of all, is doing it outside of government.”

Looking ahead, Mostashari said that it is also important to ensure two things happen:

“First, making the information more usable. But not only making sure that its always human readable, for the patient and the family to have immediate access to the information, but also making it machine readable so developers can develop new tools and services.”

 /  Published September 28, 2012 at 12:01 PM

Disgover.com Could Clear Calendars of Boring Office Meetings

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Disgover.com, a relatively new social networking and collaboration tool, is throwing out that boring and time-consuming 20th century office meeting.

Gone is the urgency for face-to-face meetings, long distance conference calls, high-priority e-mail messages or communal gatherings at a high-end hotel in a posh locale, travel costs that are a drain on government budgets in these austere times. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 15, 2011 at 9:30 AM

VA’s ‘Blue Button for All Americans’ Contest Expands Personal Health Records

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Last week’s news that the Department of Veterans Affairs was expanding its efforts to promote its Blue Button personal health record system prompted me to research the Blue Button program for Personal Health Records (PHR) and make them easier to use by our readers not just our Veterans.

President Obama highlighted the Blue Button Initiative, as have many others in recent weeks. The program is just one of a series of successful government challenges to promote innovation in government.

This is similar to my efforts to make Traumatic Brain Injury information more accessible and useful in another story.

An authoritative online resource: Managing Your Health Information Online explains the difference between: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) (much in the news) and Personal Health Records (PHR) as follows:

  • An Electronic Health Record is a safe and confidential record your doctor, other health care provider, medical office staff, or a hospital keeps on a computer about your health care or treatments. EHRs let your providers share up-to-date information about your conditions, treatments, tests and prescriptions. If your providers use EHRs, they can join a network to securely share your records with each other. EHRs help cut down on medical errors and can keep you from getting duplicate tests.
  • A Personal Health Record is a record with information about your health that you or someone helping you keeps for easy reference using a computer. You control the health information in your PHR and can get to it anywhere at any time with Internet access.
So two questions that one naturally asks are: Who offers PHRs? and is my health information private and secure in PHR?


The previously mentioned authoritative online resource: Managing Your Health Information Online answers:

  • PHRs are often offered by providers, health plans, and private companies. Some are free, while others charge fees.
  • Some independent companies create and maintain PHRs for you. If you give them permission, they may be able to get your health information from your doctor or health plan.
  • If your doctor or health plan doesn’t offer a PHR, check what’s available from other companies at http://myPHR.com.
  • Special permissions or passwords let you choose who can access your PHR so others can get your critical information quickly. When you use a PHR, make sure it’s on a secure Web site. With a secure Web site, you usually have to create a unique user ID and password, and the information you type is encrypted (put in code) so other people can’t read it.

My comment is: why not do it yourself for free, without the Internet (especially if you are not always connected or not able to use the Internet), and in a familiar environment like a spreadsheet, notepad, or word processing document.

So I am providing the “Blue Button PHR for All Americans” as an Excel spreadsheet (XLS) and Comma Separated Value (CSV) files that can be imported into most other softwares for the convenience of our readers and their family members and friends that need them but cannot afford a commercial service or use Internet services.

On August 2, 2010, President Obama announced the Blue Button capability that allows veterans and Medicare beneficiaries to download their personal health information by a simple click of a blue button.

So now you can just download the files, read the background information and do it yourself for free and with your own security. It can be on your iPhone, iPad, and/or laptop and desktop PC or Mac. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 31, 2011 at 2:33 PM