The Commons Project, a nonprofit established to build digital platforms and services for public good, has announced that the CommonHealth app has now connected to 230 health systems in the U.S., allowing patients using those health systems to gather, manage and share personal health information
This health data, which includes COVID test and vaccine status is available for download on Android devices for free. Developed by a team of clinicians, public health experts, technologists, scientists and privacy advocates, leaders of CommonHealth attest that it is the first and only platform designed to allow users of the Android operating system to collect and manage their health data on their mobile devices in a similar way that Apple Health Record operates on iOS.
Already integrated with LabCorp, which operates one of the largest clinical laboratory networks in the world, CommonHealth allows individuals to store their COVID test results and vaccination status, in addition to any health record. CommonHealth plans to integrate with an additional 110 health systems in December, connecting to more than 340 health systems before the year ends, officials contend.
Earlier this year, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) rolled out new interoperability and health data-sharing rules that will require hospitals and physician offices to send standardized medical information, such as lab test results, vaccination records and imaging tests, directly to third-party apps, like CommonHealth, by July 2021. The goal here is to have patients be in more control of their electronic health information which will drive a growing patient-facing healthcare IT economy.
Established in collaboration with UCSF, Cornell Tech and Sage Bionetworks with broad participation from all corners of the healthcare ecosystem, CommonHealth was first deployed at UCSF Health and underwent significant testing and user experience research in multiple diverse populations in San Francisco. The model was created to follow Apple’s approach, whose Health Records platform—launched early in 2018, and which is already live at hundreds of hospitals and clinics—allows patients who visit participating providers to access their health data on the iPhone Health app.
"CommonHealth offers the ability to advance and improve care while giving patients the tools they need to be an active participant in their own care," said Ida Sim, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and co-director of Informatics and Research Innovation at UCSF's Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. “CommonHealth brings long-overdue innovation to electronic health record systems and nearly half the population that uses an Android device. It’s been excellent to collaborate with The Commons Project to develop CommonHealth, and we’re even more excited to be piloting it with the UCSF Health community.”
CommonHealth aligns with the strategic mission and vision of The Commons Project to give them greater control over their health data. That means, in part, ensuring that the 2.5 billion Android users globally can securely access, store and share their medical data, once the patient has provided authorization directly from their smartphone devices, officials stated.
“The COVID pandemic has accelerated the need for the safe sharing of health data as medical consultations go online and individuals are required to demonstrate COVID test and vaccination status in order to travel, work, study and undertake other social activities,” said JP Pollak, co-founder and chief architect at The Commons Project. “CommonHealth extends the privacy-centered data portability and interoperability model pioneered by Apple Health to the 55 percent of Americans who have Android devices.”
