Up until 2014, there was a macOS and companion iOS application called ‘MyMedical’ authored by Hyrax (Website Link). Unfortunately, that application’s social media appears to have gone dark.
I am curious what folks are using to manage their personal medical records.
cc:@schmidgall - I saw you mentioned using DevonTHINK (DT) to manage your family medical records. Had you searched around for options before going with DT?
#Database
#Medical
#Data
#DevonTHINK
I keep notes in 1Password.
My doctor provides medical records on line and I expert those to PDFs. My “numbers” e.g. blood test results I keep in a Numbers spreadsheet. I don’t really see much need for anything fancy.
Australia is in the process of rolling out a government-developed online health record. I have opted all-in for myself and my son; my husband isn’t so keen but he almost never goes to the doctor. All test results are supposed to go in there. I access my MRI/CT/Xray scans and results through the company’s website and haven’t bothered to pull them off as they’re saved indefinitely.
Any results I get are scanned into PDF format, then sorted in Dropbox with the appropriate tags (the person’s name and ‘medical’). I find it really easy to find what I need almost instantly, which has been useful when my son was admitted to hospital and I was able to pull up his history within moments.
For more complex medical issues or procedures (such as IVF), I print all the results and carry the hard copies to every doctor’s appointment. It’s not my preferred way of doing it but it’s saved me countless times when I’ve been able to hand over a copy of something that’s dropped out of my file or hasn’t been made available to a particular specialist.
For medical and financial records I have an encrypted disk image where I store that info. Can’t access it on iOS but other than that it works just fine.
My documents and data (Xrays) are collected on my Mac in a single folder - sorted by date, with keywords. A backup is stored on a encrypted SD-card that is located at my workplace. See no need today for a special app to manage this data.
I was using MyMedical for a while, but a couple of years ago I started to get nervous about this app going away, so I exported all my info. I have PDFs stored in files and folders on my Mac and a plaintext task paper file with essential info… Dates of surgeries/injuries, immunization records, hospitalizations, family history, etc. I have found this plain text file essential when filing out paperwork for new docs and it is easily transportable to iOS, which I need when I’m in the docs office.
However, I’m getting into DEVONthink now for a research project I’ve been working on, and I’ve been thinking I want to set up a medical database. Then I could have everything in one place, including insurance info, and call logs with insurance reps. I have three children and I like the idea of tagging individual family members rather than sorting this through the finder interface, which is what I’m doing currently.
I can’t imagine anyone saying they have no need for such records. Perhaps I’m getting old, but I can’t remember which kid had which medical procedure, let alone the dates associated with such. I’ve been looking for a comprehensive solution to this problem for a long time and researched many apps. I think Devon is going to be the solution for me. I can even throw X-ray, MRI, and other lab results in the database. I probably wouldn’t buy Devon just for the purpose of doing this, but since I’m already using it for work and a different database, this seems like a no brainer at this point.
I use DEVONThink for this. I have a separate database called File Cabinet that has all of my records, financial, medical etc. I sync this to my iPhone so I have those records everywhere.
I use a scanner app to scan the docs and have them automatically deposited into DEVONthink.
I used to do this in Evernote, but now I’ve swapped over to DEVONthink. I scan reports, results, letters from doctors, and note down any thoughts or questions of my own.
I suppose the question is what your main requirements are…I’m not overly worried about the privacy of the things I’m storing, but it’s been useful to have reports and results readily accessible when talking with different health professionals (yes, they often have access to these things in their own system, but more often I can find things faster than them!)
Encrypted disk image https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzRnuvyeFsY
Password stored in password manager.
If it’s already a PDF you can use Automator to encrypt it. https://macosxautomation.com/automator/encryptPDFs/index.html
I did not do much research other than a goal of getting medical information out of Evernote and into a more secure location. DEVONThink allows you to encrypt your datastores, so if you use Dropbox you can still protect your sensitive data. Also you can host your own WebDAV server if you want to setup your own local storage.
I do use 1Password for medical insurance accounts and family social security numbers, etc… But 1Password was not a good option for doctor visit notes, scanning in medical invoices and insurance claims.
My wife and I both share the family medical data store and use tags so we can search across all notes and scanned medical records by family member.
Hope some of this helps!
I found this conversation and it fascinated me at the intersection of being a Mac/iOS developer and as a consultant in Healthcare data exchange. Are people looking for some kind of solution that is better than 1Password or DEVONThink? Are you happy with just the PDF of the lab report, Discharge Note or whatever or would you like to access the data that is buried in the report?
For me to move out of the simple DEVONThink system I am using I’d need to have the app pull all the data out of reports for my use. Also needs to not involve any cloud service at all.
Cloud Services would be out, you would want it local. Definitely would want to pull the data out but that would be dependent on the formats (scraping a PDF would not really be feasible). Of course Health data exchange formats is what I do…