AMIA Announces Formal Collaboration With OpenNotes

The movement to share provider notes with patients gained momentum this week. At its annual symposium in Washington, D.C., the American Medical Informatics Association announced a formal collaboration with OpenNotes.

The goal of OpenNotes is to empower patients, families, and caregivers to feel more in control of their healthcare decisions and to improve both safety and healthcare value.

More than 19 million U.S. patients now have access to their providers’ notes, and at least 20 more health systems have announced plans to join the OpenNotes movement this year. 

“The evidence-base is clear: providing patients access to their physician’s notes improves physician-patient communication and trust, patient safety, and perhaps even patient outcomes,” said Thomas Payne, M.D., AMIA board chair and medical director of IT services at the University of Washington’s UW Medicine, in a prepared statement.

The two organizations said the collaboration would build on a shared vision that patients and families should be empowered through access to and control over their health data. As part of six policy principles and positions developed in 2016 and 2017, AMIA stated that: “Policies, programs, research, and care delivery should seek to empower patients through access to, and control of, their personal health information.”

Many AMIA member organizations are already participating in OpenNotes, and the informatics community is a central part of the continued expansion of this effort. Douglas Fridsma, M.D., Ph.D., noted that more than 50 sessions at the AMIA Symposium this year are focused on consumer and personal health informatics.