About MyLinks® – A Product of PatientLink®
MyLinks is an interactive platform that allows patients to download their medical records from all their health providers, transmit their records, plus link to researchers, pharmacists, care-givers, and family and friends.
MyLinks is based on linking us together in three areas: with all our doctors, with researchers, and with each other – with a goal that this connection will result in better care for us and for those who come after us.
When diagnosed with a serious illness or living with a lifelong condition, there are 3 major things we need:
- We need our medical records to fully understand our condition (What is this disease? How serious is my personal condition? Am I going to die? Etc.)
- We need to understand what researchers are doing to cure this problem or make living with it more bearable. We want to connect with them, ask questions, participate in research or share our medical data with them.
- We need a care team to help us walk this journey – our family, our friends, others who have the same issues
When people sign up for MyLinks, they are given the choice to connect with people at multiple levels.
Users can:
- Sign up for secure messaging with their doctors and researchers
- Indicate their desire to learn about or participate in research, and even specify their topics of interest (Alzheimer’s, Autism, Brain Cancer, etc.). They can also share their medical data in a secure platform with anyone they desire. Patient data is NEVER shared without consent of the patient.
- Connect with other MyLinks users by joining forums or messaging privately
Other features:
- Connect with and download data from smart devices such as fitness bands, blood pressure devices, scales, etc.
- Create a journal to document how they are feeling
- Create and save important documents (Living Wills, Advance Directives, etc.) and send the documents to physicians and family who need them
Researchers can:
- View and filter patient demographics of those who want to participate in research
- Create and send custom questionnaires to participants
- Receive immediate structured data results as questionnaires are answered
- Receive medical records from patients who want to share their information
- Have longitudinal relationships with patients to observe how they are doing over long periods of time
The goal for MyLinks is to give people a platform to allow them to understand and take control of their own health and medical data — and enable them to join together to help find cures for the diseases that steal away those we love. MyLinks can empower people to change the way medicine is practiced and will grow along with the users. We are hoping our users will see and share the ultimate goal of where we are going – and want to be part of that movement.
Costs
It is our goal to give MyLinks free to patients and physicians. Our hope is that partners who see the benefit of connecting with patients will fund the application to keep it free. At this time, the cost for ‘Direct Secure Messaging’ (to enable a patient to send encrypted emails) is $12 per year. We are hoping to eventually provide this service free to patients.
About the Road Ahead
MyLinks allows a patient to pull their data from all certified Electronic Health Records (EHRs) using a new technology standard called FHIR® (pronounced “fire”). Starting on January 1, 2018, physicians are required to allow patients to download their data using any application of their choice, but the application must use the new technical standards. This year, certified EHRs will have new versions of their software available for health organizations by January 1, 2018.
As FHIR is implemented across the U.S. in 2017, patients will have access to their data using FHIR. The road will be bumpy at first while FHIR is being rolled out and the new workflows are being developed to give patients access to their data. But, things should get better by early-2018 when all certified EHRs have complied with the new laws.
If you are a physician or someone representing a clinic, the best way to understand the timeline for your clinic software to include FHIR is to contact your EHR vendor and ask them to give you an estimated date they will have it available to you. Then please keep us informed so we can work with you to add your organization to MyLinks.
If you are a patient or someone who will be working with multiple locations or EHRs, please email us at LearnMore@MyLinks.com and let us know the clinic names and phone numbers. We will try to research on your behalf to understand what EHR vendor they are using. If they are FHIR-enabled, we can help you get connected. If they are not FHIR-enabled, we can try to get more information about timing and contact you with that information.
If you are an organization who would like to partner with us, please contact Debi@MyLinks.com and let’s talk.
We are thrilled by our recent First Place win in the ONC’s very competitive “Phase II Consumer Health Data Aggregator Challenge”. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is the most prestigious entity in Healthcare IT. It is the principal federal entity charged with coordinating national efforts to implement and use the most advanced health information technology to promote the electronic exchange of health information. It is an honor for MyLinks to be chosen as the best consumer application by the ONC.
This is the future of healthcare. We would love to have you join us.
Debi Willis
CEO / Founder