PHILADELPHIA – A new feature has put medical records drawn from hospitals and outpatient clinics across the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) into patients’ own hands. The new feature, health records on iPhone, is an new addition to the Apple Health app.
Penn Medicine includes six hospitals, ten multispecialty medical centers, a rehabilitation network, numerous pharmacies and labs, and hundreds of affiliated physicians throughout the Philadelphia region. The system’s physicians and leaders call the new effort an important step for patient engagement, which they hope will impact outcomes by providing patients an easy way to access crucial health information no matter where they are.
“Many patients receive the majority of their care within UPHS and sometimes receive their care at alternative health systems,” said Michael Restuccia, senior vice president and chief information officer at Penn Medicine. “This new feature brings together their data from multiple sources and will allow the patient to better understand and monitor their health associated with all participating patient care locations, have more knowledgeable and productive conversations with their physicians, and make healthcare decisions more effectively.”
The information available to patients via the app includes allergies, medical conditions, immunizations, lab results such as cholesterol readings, current and past medications, procedures, and vitals. Patients will also receive notifications when their records are updated. Health Records data are encrypted and protected with the user’s iPhone passcode.
Once patients sign up and update to iOS 11.3 on their iPhone, they can tap on the health record icon to see all of their available medical data from multiple Penn healthcare organizations, as well as other participating institutions, in one convenient view.
The new feature allows patients to view their records on their phones. Features for making appointments and communicating with doctors remain available to Penn Medicine patients through myPennMedicine, the health system’s online portal, which is used by nearly 500,000 patients.
“An app like this provides patients an opportunity to be at the center of their care in a new way, which we hope will improve overall patient engagement – and ultimately improve patient outcomes,” Restuccia said.
UPHS is one of nearly 40 health systems representing hundreds of hospitals that are participating in the program.
For more information on Health Records, visit https://www.apple.com/healthcare/health-records/. Penn Medicine patients can also sign up for myPennMedicine online.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.