If we had truly robust standards for electronic data interchange and less anxiety about privacy, these kinds of data could be moved around more freely in a structured format. Of course, there are regional exchanges where they do. The data could also be created in structured format to begin with.

Despite some implementation challenges, patient portals have allowed millions of patients to access to their medical records, read physicians’ notes, message providers, and contribute valuable information and corrections.

Data gathering is ubiquitous in science. Giant databases are currently being minedfor unknown patterns, but in fact there are many (many) known patterns that simplyhave not been catalogued. Consider the well-known case of medical records. A patient’smedical history is often known by various individual doctor-offices but quite inadequatelyshared between them. Sharing medical records often means faxing a hand-written noteor a filled-in house-created form between offices.