Advocates say consumer access equals better healthcare outcomes

Increasing consumers' access to medical information is crucial to improving patient health and preventing dangerous drug interactions, a panel of health experts said Tuesday.

Patients with access to their own records and outside sources of medical information feel empowered to challenge their doctors on the best treatment, according to speakers at a Disruptive Women in Health Care panel on "User-Generated Healthcare” in Washington.

Dr. Marlene Beggelman, founder of Enhanced Medical Decisions, which creates datamining software for electronic medical records, said one of the biggest problems in healthcare is the high cost of tracking whether treatments work.

"It's too expensive to do studies to monitor outcomes if you have to do it manually by reading medical files," Beggelman said. Even after research is complete and particular treatment has been proven ineffective, she said it can take over 10 years for that information to make it into doctors’ offices.

Julie Murchinson, managing director of Manatt Health Solutions, called the healthcare industry "quite paternalistic" and said access to medical information is an issue of patient safety. She cited statistics from the Bush administration that patients receive "appropriate care" only 55 percent of the time.

"Health 2.0 is really trying to ride the trend of personalization and mobility in healthcare," Murchinson said. "At the end of the day we should be able to download our own health data and use it in whatever way we need to."

Linda Von Schweber, co-founder of Surveyor Health, said her company provides an online resource where patients can input their medications and be warned of potential harmful side effects or interactions. Von Schweber said the average 65-year-old takes between eight and 10 medications, making it impossible for any physician to predict all the possible reactions.

"There are 39 trillion possible combinations, and that's prescription-only, taken properly," Von Schweber said. "No physician in the world has all that information in his head."