This is Larry Weed. He was a physician, researcher, and educator who is known for making one of the most important contributions to healthcare. Back in 1970, Weed gave a salient talk at Emory University to the physicians and students training there. He observed how students struggled with understanding unstructured patient notes written by doctors and realized the importance of keeping accurate and easily understandable patient records.
What I'd like to do is go at this problem not from the point of view of the record. I mean, we really aren't taking care of records. We take care of people. And we're trying to get across the idea that this record cannot be separated from the caring of that patient. This is not something the practice of medicine over here and the record over here. This is the practice of medicine. It's intertwined with it. It determines what you do in the long run.
Weed realized how deeply the record shaped the quality of care itself. So, he redesigned it. Weed published an article called "Medical Records That Guide and Teach" in the New England Journal of Medicine. It laid out the framework for the problem-oriented medical record and established a standardized format for doctors' notes. Today, that redesign is still the backbone of your electronic health record.
But a new problem has emerged. Your story doesn't live in just one record anymore. It's split across your doctor's office, your local clinic, your pharmacy, every ER visit, each with its own version of you and no way to see them together. For most patients, their stories are still scattered. Patients don't have a single cohesive record. And when hospitals only have part of your story, researchers can only see part of the picture when it comes to finding answers. What we do have is a critical and ongoing data problem.
When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, I had so many questions. What was my best possible first treatment? Should I join a clinical trial? If so, which trials am I eligible for? And how do I find them? Why do some treatments work for some and not for others? Where can I go to find others like me?
What I needed was personalized support tailored to my myeloma story. With so many treatment options, I wanted my doctor to look at data from thousands of myeloma patients like me and see what worked best for them. But first, was my health record unified into a single source of truth aggregated from all the hospitals and clinics where I've been seen? And is there a tool to share it so experts can help me make decisions seeing my whole picture?
I agree with what Dr. Lawrence Weed said back in the 1970s. Patients are the largest untapped resource in medical care today. Armed with the data and tools we need, we can make a fundamental shift in healthcare that empowers the patient.
Today, we're announcing the creation of HealthTree's free personal health record. It's designed to support your decision-making with a more complete picture. With your permission, electronic health records from your various treatment centers are combined, validated, and organized into one accurate record kept secure by encryption and access controls that put you in charge of your data.
When your personal record brings everything together, you now own your story. The data follows you around. You can take it with you to the clinic, to the ER, and for a second opinion.
Then HealthTree can personalize your support. On healthtree.org, you can find articles, videos, guides, and resources that are tailored to the topics that matter to you. You unlock context-specific support aligned with your diagnosis, treatment, and where you are in your care. It allows HealthTree to show you treatment options and clinical trials that you qualify for or solutions to the side effects you're managing.
On top of that, your personal health record turns valuable information into validated anonymous, real-world data that HealthTree-approved researchers can access to drive faster progress. You can also add your voice directly by completing surveys and joining studies that explore questions your medical records alone can't answer. You can do more than just receive care from the research system. You can help power it.
With complete and trustworthy data, you are armed with the personalized tools you need to proactively navigate your cancer. Physicians can confidently prescribe the right personalized treatments and researchers have the data and insights required to accelerate cures. HealthTree is driving a revolutionary change in healthcare where every patient owns and controls a personal health record. Hear from patients who have already created their own personal health record and how it has helped them.
HealthTree literally changed my life. So, when I originally joined and submitted my health data and my health records, I found that to be amazing now to have personal data records where it's more personalized. Here's your data, but here are the other basically usable components that we can give you based on your data. And I love that.
The thing that I think I like the most is the ability to track the labs and have things all in one place. I was being seen at two different organizations. It was one of those things having to search through things and very difficult to look for trends. Being able to put that together and see things all in one place made a lot of sense.
In the past, I would have to search for, you know, clinical trials. To be able to submit your data and to be able to have clinical trials, you know, being offered to you, different options for treatment, for therapy. I feel like I'm a competent patient, but this I think makes me hyper-competent.
One of the things that I've found is I've gone back and looked at some of my results. It's given me the time to reflect on what some of the information is, some things that maybe I didn't catch the first time. That then generates questions for my doctors.
Trying to get people to understand that data is everything. When you understand what's going on with your body, then you can take actionable steps. Every month I have 15 tests, over 100 data points from those 15 tests. I go through and I look at every one of them and I look at my history. This takes a lot of work. But literally submitting your records, you can look at this and it comes back in such an easier format.
When you have that access to actionable data and when it actually comes to you in a form where it's very easy through HealthTree, it really does help you to become a more competent patient. You know, a patient who is able to be active in managing your care, in improving your care, and in optimizing your care.
The data is safe, it's encrypted. You as the patient own it completely. You can shut it down at any point in time. When it's accessed by researchers, it's completely anonymized. They look at things in the aggregate. They're not looking at a specific patient with a specific name. Being able to offer that brings us all, we hope, closer to a cure.
Your story is yours. Now it can finally work for you. Join the thousands of patients building their own personal health records. Own your story. Personalize your support. Power the cure. Create your personal health record today.
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