OpenNotes is a health informatics project in the United States designed to facilitate patients' access to their own medical record.
Contents
Background
OpenNotes specifically seeks to make available the notes written casually by physicians, which are not part of the formal medical record. Patients have access to notes through an online portal. The project is directed by Tom Delbanco and Jan Walker of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The project was initiated in 2010 as a one-year pilot study, involving approximately 100 doctors and 20,000 patients at three sites across the U.S. Researchers reported that at the year's end, 99% of patients surveyed wanted to continue accessing their notes, and no doctors chose to discontinue participation.