PATIENT ACCESS: MedicaLogic Connects Physicians with Patients

      MedicaLogic announced yesterday the launch of its 98point6 service, "making it the first company to offer patients personalized, private and highly secure online access to their physician-created medical records." The service allows patients to review data from their medical records, helps them find information related to their condition and will "soon give them the ability to make online appointment requests, obtain prescription refills, ask questions of their physicians, and see an audit trail of all individuals who have had access to their patient record." Dr. Jeffrey Greiff, a family physician in Plantation, Fla., suggested that the service would probably "provide convenience for [those] patients who are frequent business travelers, portability of medical information ... [and] care management information for [senior] patients and their families." MedicaLogic founder and CEO Dr. Mark Leavitt said, "[The new service] reinvigorates the patient-physician relationship by enhancing communication and convenience for both parties." By providing consumers the opportunity to manage their own medical records, MedicaLogic maintains that it can "take patient privacy and the confidentiality of medical information to a higher level than paper records ever have." Interim chief security officer Dr. Blackford Middleton said, "Nothing has a higher priority at MedicaLogic than the confidentiality and security of patient medical records." He added, "We are using mature, proven Internet technologies and security standards for secure connection and transmission to give patients control over how their protected information is used" (MedicaLogic release, 3/28).