July 1, 2009 - ANNANDALE, VA – President Obama called for fixing the broken healthcare system by building upon investments made in electronic medical records in a town hall meeting held Wednesday. 
"I know that people say the costs of fixing our problems are great - and in some cases, they are," Obama said. "The costs of inaction, of not doing anything, are even greater. They're unacceptable.  And that's why this town hall and this debate that we're having around healthcare is so important."
The president highlighted the continued use of electronic medical records as one way to help drive down costs.
"We already made those investments in the Recovery Act  - because when everything is digitalized, all your records - your privacy is protected, but all your records on a digital form - that reduces medical errors.  It means that nurses don't have to read the scrawl of doctors when they are trying to figure out what treatments to apply.  That saves lives; that saves money; and it will still ensure privacy," the president said.
The president ended his speech by calling for the American people to "stand up and say now is the time."

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SGMS CORP'S LATEST SURVEY REVEALS THAT 68% OF AMERICANS
WANT TO CONTORL THEIR MEDICAL INFORMATION (May, 2009)
Consumers want technology to help keep them healthy, SGMS survey shows...

Insurers can no longer wait for consumers to self-manage their chronic conditions through standalone Web tools," said Dennis Schmuland, MD, U.S. health insurance industry director .
"Consumers want their providers and insurers to team together to help them replace bad health habits with good ones, reduce their health risks and equip them to self-manage their conditions. This requires a new generation of technology designed to proactively improve health and coordinate care at the individual and community levels."

According to the SGMS Corp. survey,

• 66 percent of Americans are interested in receiving health-related encouragement or reminder e-mails from their health insurance company;
• 52 percent would be open to receiving e-mails that provide them with feedback on their health progress.; and
• 62 percentbelieve that personal health record services are valuable.

Technology seen as 'inviting'
The survey results point to the fact that technology is not yet helping Americans proactively manage their health. Currently, consumers reactively turn to health Web sites looking for information about a current issue or illness (68 percent) instead of to learn how to become healthier. However, consumers seem to be ready to incorporate technology into their health behavior. Almost four in five (77 percent) of Americans find the idea of technology helping solve their healthcare needs as "inviting" instead of "intimidating."

Patients who take an active role in their healthcare are more likely to receive the best care possible from their doctor," said Ted Epperly, MD, president, American Academy of Family Physicians. "When patients and their personal physicians work together and involve technologies that empower them to improve their health habits, they can lower their health risks and self-manage chronic conditions.  It's critical for providers, patients, and public and private payers to work as a team to improve health, wellbeing and outcomes at the individual and community levels.  Such collaboration would help control the runaway rate of medical costs that keeps health coverage beyond the financial means of many Americans."

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June 2009 - Health Management Technology Magazine
OVER 25% OF CHARTS contain errors about a patients vital signs . . .This startling fact was just released and shows that in most major hospitals and doctors offices over 25% of what the doctors and nurses write on your charts, especially about your vital signs are wrong. This mis-information can cause serious damage to a person’s health and has the potential to cause their death if not detected and corrected.  
(This is why Safe Guard Medi-Systems Corp is so intent on bringing their Portable EMR to the public’s attention, to help prevent these types of errors.)

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Spring, 2009 Encryption added to SGSM Corp. USB Medi-Chips.
 SGMS Corp is pioneering the way into expanding the role of the EMR by creating an extra storage on every EMR which will have the ability to store ENCRYPTED DATA WHICH ONLY THE PATIENT CAN ACCESS.
Information such as bank accounts, passport numbers, drivers licenses, insurance policies, stocks and bonds and much, much more. This way in case of a natural disaster or emergency, the individual will have all their important papers and documents with them at all time and safe in the knowledge that they are encrypted with the highest level of encryption, one that our own government uses.. 256/512 AES Encryption.

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ELECTRONIC HEALTH INFORMATION:  Empowering consumers to improve health care quality

The effective and safe use of patient-centered personal health information promises to improve the quality of care through better coordination, fewer duplicative tests and better overall drug safety.

This vision is largely unrealized, due to a host of policy and governance issues. Privacy concerns and a culture of "institutional ownership” predominates rather than patient ownership of their own medical records.

The American health system has been slow to recognize each patient's inherent right to their own information. It is common for physicians to charge patients to gain copies of their own medical records-- records that those same physicians forward to other doctors for free. Many physicians remain resistant to patient annotation of personal health record data, even though medical encounters represent health at a single point in time; whereas illness and disease are a continuous ongoing condition

(A personal portable EMR Medi-Chip USB Flash Drive can be one answer to this problem.)