Great News for Consumers from ONC: The Blue Button Continues to Deliver

The HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) made a couple of cool announcements recently and we get to hear about them directly from Lygeia Ricciardi, Director of the Office of Consumer eHealth, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, HHS in my video interview with her at HiMSS (#HiMSS14) in late February 2014.

The HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) made a couple of cool announcements recently and we get to hear about them directly from Lygeia Ricciardi, Director of the Office of Consumer eHealth, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, HHS in my video interview with her at HiMSS (#HiMSS14) in late February 2014.

The first announcement is that 5 major pharmacy chains have joined the Blue Button community of organizations that offer access to the data they hold on behalf of consumers.  That means soon consumers will be able to download their prescription data via the Blue Button technology as one more way that they can take control of their health and wellness data.  Great news.  Watch the video below to see which pharmacy chains are participating.

The other Blue Button-related announcement is the first version of the Blue Button Connector website has been released.  Check out www.bluebuttonconnector.healthit.gov to see the new site that helps consumers connect and better use their health data to improve health.  What a concept.  My data, my health, my ability to use it to get as healthy as I can.  Love it.

By the way, consumers, if you want this site to get as good as it can be, then you need to spend some time on it, note what you like and what you don’t and then provide feedback to ONC to help improve the site. Like all websites, early releases are, well, early releases.  They get better because of user (aka consumer) feedback.  Just do it.  This could be one of the most important websites for consumer health ever.

Here’s the video (enjoy):

First published on The Doctor Weighs In.