Portable data: The MyCare show was developed to store an entire history of patients.
Credit: Engineering and physical Sciences Research Council unified health systems and limited infrastructure offer opportunities to the medical IT innovators. Tuesday, June 14, 2011By Kenrick Vezina

Countries, including the United States, do not have the most integrated online patient record systems. Patients visit new doctors must complete paper of medical history forms. What's more is, records can time patchy, incomplete and difficult to access. This leads to two inefficiencies in the medical record system, the cost of money and medical errors, can cost lives.

Researchers and entrepreneurs hope to change by each patient a smart card, his or her complete medical history. This approach can be difficult to implement in the United States, prove due to security reasons and compatibility issues, but the technology has the potential, health care in countries the health systems, unified, or where there is insufficient infrastructure for the exchange of data sets in other ways.

Researchers in the UK developed the MyCare show, about the size and shape of a credit card with USB plug Fold-Out is. Another project, SmartCare, first implemented in Zambia, has recently to Ethiopia and South Africa and demonstrates the potential for card based systems in parts of the world with limited infrastructure.

The MyCare map was developed at the City University London; the software for it was developed at the Coventry University and is open source. The fact that everyone download and the code to view, who can contribute to improve efforts or expand, giving benefits.

Developers can create new software, the interface with the data on the card - for example automatically detects incompatible prescriptions and shows an alert to pharmacists. Open-source software has also increased security because the software can be tested open for serious error. Security is an important issue around medical ID cards that store potentially sensitive private information. People fear their entire medical history lose the possibility as easily as she could lose a wallet.

The MyCare card is as easy as possible for a variety of computers and operating systems interface. Instead of the installation on a computer require, the maps software directly from the card itself.

In the current stage of development, PINs and a degree of encryption protect the data on the card. Panicos Kyriacou, project manager at the City University London, says that more secure encryption be implemented further in the development process.