'For decades, America's health care networks have been overdue for a high tech upgrade, and that's what we're doing,' president says
US President Donald Trump launched a new initiative Wednesday being dubbed the "digital health tech ecosystem" for Americans to upload their medical records to apps run by private tech companies with the promise of helping people access their health records.
Trump made the announcement at a formal White House event attended by senior officials and representatives of major tech firms including Apple, Google and Amazon.
"For decades, America's health care networks have been overdue for a high tech upgrade, and that's what we're doing. The existing systems are often slow, costly and incompatible with one another, but with today's announcement, we take a major step to bring health care into the digital age, something that is absolutely vital," he said.
"Today, the dream of easily transportable electronic medical records finally becomes a reality," he added.
Details on the new system remain scarce, but Trump said it will be "opt-in," meaning users would have to choose to participate, and he said he made a "key breakthrough" with 60 major tech companies to get them "to agree to industry-wide standards for electronic medical records."
"This will allow patients to easily transmit information from one doctor to another, even if they're different networks and using different record keeping systems. No matter what system they use, they're all transferable," he said.
