Markle Foundation's recommendations for 'blue button' backed by 46 organizations

Forty-six organizations have showed their support for the Markle Foundation's recommendations for privacy and security practices for the "blue button," which would allow patients to have instant access to their healthcare records. Markle is calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to make patients' access to their records a priority in all health IT efforts, including:

• Specifying the download capability as an allowable means for providers to deliver electronic copies of health information to individual patients consistent with the policy and technology recommendations of the Markle Connecting for Health Common Framework.
• Making the download capability and our policy recommendations a requirement of qualified health IT so that providers using qualified systems will have this capability.
• Making the download capability a core requirement for federal- and state-sponsored health IT grants and projects.