A newish brand

 

 

Well, it’s not totally new. We’ve been using the heart logo on the website for a while. But as we continue the rebuild of Symple, we want to get a little closer to our purpose and mission:

Symple is a personal health record made relevant for today's healthcare consumer. Built to be used within the context of daily life, Symple helps anyone gather the information they need in a format clinicians can use.

Wait, what??

From the very beginning, I’ve been wrestling with 2 problems I encountered as a patient:

  1. Giving my doctor an honest, accurate assessment of my symptoms between office visits.

  2. Making sure that she knew my complete medical history.

So the first piece you understand, but the second piece deserves some explanation. You see, the first hospital to treat me was a specialty clinic in Baltimore, which was many hours away from my home. So when I transferred to a closer facility, I thought all of my records went with me.

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But they didn’t. And that’s why I almost got an unnecessary second chest CT … along with a fat dose of radiation and a big bill to boot! No one needs that.

I was too sick and naive to question if my scans, blood work and notes had been automagically transferred. Despite all the new tech and iPads and EMRs, the same thing would happen today, because we patients are the linchpin that unlocks those records and make them available to our clinicians. In fact, here’s an article about how this same problem affected our current Secretary of Health and Human Services (or, her husband). If a Cabinet Secretary can’t get her family member’s health records, imagine how hard it is for the rest of us? That’s why I think we need to knuckle down and do the work ourselves. Our lives just might depend on it.

Note:

  • if you are part of an integrated health system such as Kaiser Permanente or Geisinger Health, or if you get your care from single payor system, your records are available as you travel throughout the system. But for the rest of us, the responsibility to identify and unlock those records is ours.

  • The other benefit of building your own health history is it helps you keep tabs on your health. Like…when was your last tetanus booster?

  • Finally, we make it easy for you to build your history over time and when you’re able…not when you’re doubled over in the ER.




natasha gajewski