Dr. Paul Buehrens, MD calls it a multi-purpose tool for doctors and patients.
A family practitioner and director of a large medical group, Buehrens has worked with Sync.MD for the past seven years as the company developed a mobile app that allows patients to request, store and share their personal health records from their smartphones.
“It has huge applications,” Buehrens said. “To have secure, mobile (health) records is revolutionary. Nobody has done this before.”
As a physician, Buehrens knows the importance of having easy, speedy access to health records. A Sync.MD user and frequent traveler, Buehrens said he stores his Driver’s License, passport, credit cards and health records on the app, allowing him to retrieve the information wirelessly, wherever he is in the world.
“The science shows that most of the errors in medicine occur with handoffs – when a person is transitioning into the hospital, out of the hospital, from one (medical) office to another,” Buehrens said. “Part of it is because the (medical) records don’t come through in time. Sometimes they’re lost. Sometimes they come through too soon and they get filed away in a pile and nobody knows who that person is.”
A request for health records in paper form typically takes about six weeks, according to Buerhens. Sync.MD app users can request their medical records electronically from any provider, receiving them in a matter of days.
“It’s actually a legal right for people to get their records from a source within 30 days. You can get an electronic copy and it’s your right, as a patient, to get your records that way,” Buerhens said. “Sync.MD is a way for people to control their own records.”
How it works
Smartphone users can download the Sync.MD app from the App Store or go to SyncMD.com and scan the QR Code with their phone’s camera.
Users will be prompted to scan their Drivers’ License and sign on the screen, then they can specify which provider they wish to request records from.
Users also can use the app while requesting records in person at a provider’s office. The healthcare provider simply goes to the Sync.MD website, and the patient scans the QR code displayed on the screen with his or her phone. That syncs the patient’s phone with the provider’s computer. Documents can then be dragged and dropped into the computer’s browser, with records immediately transferred to the patient’s smartphone.
The Sync.MD app is free however patients will pay an average of $6.50 per release of records – a typical fee for the release of medical records in printed form.
Sync.MD was founded eight years ago in Seattle, Washington by professionals from the healthcare and technology industries. The company moved its headquarters to Anderson, SC in 2021. For more information, visit SyncMD.com.
