My Health Record: Connecting Australians with their own health information

摘要

The expansion of My Health Record marks an important change in Australia's healthcare system. In February 2019, a My Health Record was created for people, unless they chose not to have one. This opt-out participation model resulted in a large number of Australians now having access to My Health Record, with approximately 90.1% of those eligible for Medicare participating in the system at the time of record creation. While a national electronic summary record has been available since July 2012, the move to an opt-out system with the ongoing option to permanently delete their record at any time offers Australians an important choice about how they wish to interact with their personal health information. There has been a global move to digitise health systems and data over recent years to improve the way clinicians access accurate health information at the point of care. This is hardly surprising given the critical importance of access to high-quality data in delivering safer care and better health outcomes for our patients. Some countries around the world are now developing digital services that allow people to access their own health information. The growth of these "personal health record" systems (Tang et al., 2006) - like Australia's My Health Record - represent an important change for people, empowering them to play a more active and informed role in managing their health in partnership with their healthcare providers.