Why is accessing your personal health information so important? There are many reasons, of course.

Let’s take a moment and create a scenario. You are at an oral surgeon’s office waiting to be seen for a consultation on a tooth extraction. You fill out the endless amount of paperwork and one of the questions you are asked is to list your current medications. You write down your regular maintenance medications for blood pressure and cholesterol. You submit your paperwork and wait to be seen by the surgeon or nurse practitioner and his/her staff.

At the conclusion of the appointment you and your provider agreed that the tooth does need to be extracted and book your next appointment. The morning of the surgery you follow all of the instructions the surgical staff has given you including not taking your blood pressure and cholesterol medications.

You show up at the office at your scheduled time, surgery goes well and you return home to sleep off the anesthesia. Throughout the evening you noticed that at the site of extraction you are still bleeding a good bit. You give the surgeon a call and decide maybe you should go meet them in their office to make sure everything is OK.

While the surgeon is examining the site of extraction you suddenly realized you never told the surgeon you were on Coumadin (a blood thinner medication)!

Now, there are many things the surgeon could have done to prevent this situation from happening, but ultimately it was the patient’s responsibility to disclose all medication history. What could have been a way the patient could have prevented this from happening? One way is if you had access to all of your health information or even better: have access to your health information on your smartphone.

This leads us to ask “why?” Why were we not utilizing this tool and why were health care professionals not pushing this service to all of its patients when it was first introduced?

The biggest concern for many people was the fear of the information being hacked into or turning over the information to a third party app may cause a leak in information thus medical institutions may have trouble maintaining its clientele.

Another reason why patients have a hard time obtaining health information is because healthcare professionals quote “HIPAA” (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) as a reason to why they do not release health information.

On the contrary, since 1996 HIPAA requires any healthcare institution “to provide patients with access to any data that are ‘readily producible’ in the format the patient requests.”

Fortunately, as technology grows so do our trends and desires. With this said, nearly 77% of Americans own a smart device, giving patients access to many different health applications and health information all in the palm of their hands.

For iPhone users, there is a “Health” app that allows your phone to sync to many other health devices such as FitBit, Apple Watch, blood pressure monitors, etc which can then all be submitted to your physician.

Another program that is helping diminish the stereotype that it is not safe to allow patients to access their health information is the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Open Notes which not only allows patients to access their health information but also encourages patients to contribute to their own medical chart.

Other resources health institutions are implementing this phenomenon are Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and the Substitutable Medical Applications Reusable Technology Health Information Technology (Smart) applications.

Other supporting companies who are partnering with health care institutions are Google, Amazon and Microsoft to help safely store and transfer patient health information.

The advantages of health information technology are endless and a powerful and useful tool for not only patients but also for physicians and research teams to provide better and more personalized care.

Dr. Rushi S. Patel, DDS, Ph.D., with Citrus Oral and Facial Surgery, is board certified and a graduate of Lecanto High School. Visit on the Web at www.citrusofs.com.