UCSF, UC San Diego study finds few patients downloading health records via smartphone apps

Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Print Federal healthcare policymakers are pushing to give patients easier access to their electronic health data via smartphone apps. The private sector also is playing a role in these efforts—Apple launched its Health Records feature in January 2018, and now more than 200 healthcare providers have joined the project.

Are patients actually using these apps to get their health records? At this early stage, uptake has been modest, but the numbers are growing, according to an assessment looking at 12 early-adopter health systems published in JAMA Network Open.

Julia Adler-Milstein, Ph.D., an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and Christopher Longhurst, M.D., chief information officer and associate chief medical officer at UC San Diego Health, evaluated the use of health record application programming interfaces with the aim of creating baseline national measures of patient uptake against which to track future progress.