Thank you all for your valuable insights. I travel for business quite a bit, motorcycle and backpack often, activities which require me to lighten carrying as much as possible. I want to be prepared for medical care in case its needed.
I do have a Road ID bracelet with name, town/state/country, wife phone, son phone, brother phone. I figure that takes care of "who the heck is this unconscious body and who can we call to notify?". I agree the Road ID is great. I didn't go for the interactive web version, more on that later.
Beyond that I also carry a wallet card with all of the above plus more contact phone numbers, SS#, Drivers Lic #, Passport #, blood type, allergies, last shots, GP doctor names.
My intent was not so much for critical emergency use information, but for the types of detail that Jeff_M pointed out - fuller personal data, DOB, all relevant medical professionals, background on medical conditions and past operations, all current meds including scrips, OTC, herbal; insurance carrier detail, etc. After raising two kids and being married for quite a few years, I've spent my time in ERs and doctors offices trying to remember all the relevant data not just for me but also family members.
That's why I was thinking an USB memory device could be an option. However, after seeing some of the posts and doing some web research I agree that expecting medical personnel to put a foreign device into their computer is not realistic. I even found a government study on personal health records that came to the same conclusion. It makes sense in the age we live in - no IT administrator will reasonably allow unknown patients to plug a unsecured device into their system.
Personally, I find paper impractical. I could carry it on business trips but I know it won't reliably make it on motorcycle rides and backpacking.
That brings us to the evil web. I checked out Google Health when it was first released and decided no way was I going to put my health information on the web. During this discussion I looked again at Google and several other free and paid services. I decided to give Google Health a try and see how it feels.It has a pretty nice interface and you can enter your typical stuff - age, height, meds, vitamins, conditions, allergies, test results, medical professionals, insurance companies, etc. It has some interesting features like drug interactions based on your entries - it flagged my fish oil and flaxseed oil as potentially too much Vit E. It also lets you import your prescription history from CVS, MedCo, Walgreens, and others. Also as expected it's full of links to info on conditions, finding doctors. It will prepare a PDF report of you information suitable to hand to Jeff_M at the hospital.
Another feature I like is that it lets you upload additional files and images to your account. In my case I uploaded an additional document to hand to Jeff_M with detail not included in the generated PDF. I also uploaded scans of my health/dental insurance cards (yes both sides), my blood donor card, organ donation card, advanced directive, some recent medical test results, and images/history of some hardware I have in my shoulder from long ago.
All in all, I like Google Health. For me, it is more likely to be updated than paper. It is information rich. I can print out a current report before I go somewhere. More importantly, being web based I believe it is more likely that I and medical personnel will be able to access it at the Point Of Care if need be.
The bad? Yes, it's on the web, and in the hands of a mega-corporation. Believe me I read quite a bit before I used it. I think it is secure now, but who's to say what can happen to your data in the future. Will your data be sold at some point? Can it be hacked into? I don't have any medical conditions that could cause problems with insurability, but I know folks who do. Should they trust a web based personal health record?
Anyway for now, that's what I'm going with. I appreciate all your wisdom and look forward to any comments. Life is for learning.
- Andy
_________________________
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau
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