What is a longitudinal health record?

A longitudinal health record is an electronic medical record of patient health information generated by one or more encounters in any care delivery setting.

Each visit to the doctor usually focuses on a single reason for the encounter. You may be undergoing an annual physical exam or may have an injury or illness that needs to be treated. Your doctor typically sees you for that particular reason, charts the visit notes, and then goes on to the next patient. Each visit creates a record. Each person has a lifetime of records, but historically medical records have been kept on paper and handwritten by your doctor – making them hard to access. 

Since 2009, doctors have adopted computer systems called Electronic Health Records Systems (EHRs) which create digital records that you can access through your doctors' patient portals and your OneRecord! There are over 3000 Electronic Health Records Systems (EHRs) and there are about 10 that dominate the market. That means that your medical records i.e. your data is living in all these different cloud environments with no single source of truth for you – the owner of the data.

OneRecord puts you at the center of your health care by giving you access and ownership of your medical records and health information in one place by building your very own longitudinal health record directly from the data we pull via APIs from your doctor.

Your information stays with you and builds as you go through the health care system, instead of depositing information at every stop you make. OneRecord gives you control of your information – to better understand it, to share when you want to, and to empower you to make better choices on your own behalf.