If you’re in the United States and you’ve ever had to deal with the healthcare system, you know what a hot mess it is. One of the problems I’ve run into is keeping track of all my records across a number of doctors, specialists, and hospitals across time. That where my idea for FlowVault came from.

I can’t keep up with everything

Did I have some shot when I was 6 that is super important to know about at this moment? I don’t know what surgery or procedure I prefer, I don’t remember what the images or notes were. I have no clue what that one doctor said 3 years ago. There are so many things that don’t get shared between medical professions that take care of us and in some ways I understand why.

It’s hard to trust any one entity to guard your health info, especially when there’s so much going on with data breaches, AI (in general), and political crap. At the same time though, I can’t keep up with all of the documents, lab results, notes, and decisions. I vaguely remember some of the medical terminology that has been used and for some reason, my medical providers trust my explanations of what the other providers have done. 🫠

I just want to be able to give them all of my files, like here, you can search through them and find whatever info you need.

I want my stuff in one spot

On the other side, I also want to have my info uploaded to the same place by everyone that takes notes. Surgery pictures? Here’s a link to upload them. Labwork? Go ahead and skip MyChart and put it over here. Your notes about our conversations? I’m sure someone in the office can scan them in. Then the app can organize the data under a few tags that I can reference as I need.

I can give them a link with some credentials and they can upload and tag it under one of a few labels. This way, all of my things are in one place that I control. They aren’t linked to hospital or medical system so they easily travel with me and I don’t have to submit a bunch of record transfer requests. Now when I get ready to go to a new medical office, I can give them access to all of my medical records and they are already categorized so doctors can find what they need quickly.

It can even be sorted by time or category so we can both browse through the info quickly. It also gets rid of any ambiguity between me and the doctors. I can see the exact same things they do so when we’re talking about symptoms and issues, we can walk through it together because I’ll have had time to review my history too.

I can add my own notes any time

When I’ve explained symptoms to doctors before, they put them into medical terms which is fine. That’s what they use to describe what’s going on for treatment and insurance purposes. But sometimes I need it recorded in my own words so that I remember what I was talking about at the time. There are times when visits go by so fast that one question can almost blindside me and make it hard for me to remember what’s been going on.

Now I can record things as they happen and the doctors and nurses can see them before I come in. It takes a huge mental load off of keeping track of when and what happened. These can also be tagged with specific labels so you can follow how treatments affect the symptoms.

Regardless of whether FlowVault makes any real money, I’m going to use it for myself. It seems like a simple concept: let patients own their own medical data. There are probably some deeper reasons I haven’t found yet for why the standard is for hospitals and medical systems own patient data. Maybe it’s a leftover from when all of the records had to be paper, but I’ll find out with my own data first.