Cell Phone Users Gain Mobile Access To Health DataCell Phone Users Gain Mobile Access To Health Data

If you're on a family ski vacation and your kid breaks a leg, wouldn't it be nice to have instant access to information about your child's antibiotic allergies for that out-of-state emergency worker who's about to write a prescription?

That's the sort of functionality that AllOne Health Group has begun making available through AllOne Mobile, an application that can allow consumers to securely access their -- and their dependents' -- personal health record data through their cell phones and PDAs.

AllOne Health is targeting AllOne Mobile to health plans and insurers that provide their members with personal health records, as well as employers that provide workers with personal health record capabilities.

The first health plan that's rolled out AllOne Mobile to its members is Hospital Services Association, or HSA, of Northeastern Pennsylvania, the parent company of Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, which began piloting the software about a year ago.

Now, AllOne Health soon expects to announce similar deals with other health plans -- and employers -- who will also begin to provide their members and employees secure mobile access to personal health record data, said Stuart Segal, VP of integrated operations at AllOne Health Group.

The application being used by HSA will allow more than 300,000 members to securely access via their cell phones information about insurance coverage and personal health record data, including prescription drug and allergy information and lab test results. Once the information is pulled up on the phone, the user can fax it to doctors or other health care providers like school nurses, who need the information.

The AllOne Mobile data is stored in a "health data vault" that's password-protected and encrypted through AllOne's technology partnership with Diversinet Corp., a provider of wireless security applications, Segal said.

While AllOne is initially making the mobile application available to consumers via health plans and employers, later this year the company will also make the application available to individuals who have other third-party electronic personal health records, said Segal. The company will likely make that functionality available to consumers via monthly or yearly subscriptions, he said.

"We're PHR [personal health record] agnostic," he said. The application has the ability to interact with many different personal health record technologies, he said.