Cell phones used to be for making calls. These days, it seems like almost every day there is a new cell phone application (app) that allows people to listen to their favorite music, read the newspaper, look for restaurants, or write notes, among others. Now add accessing medical records to the list.

Sutter Health in Sacramento recently announced that it became the first hospital system in California to provide patients access to MyChart for the iPhone, an app that allows patients to access their electronic health records using an iPhone. The application allows consumers to send a secure message to their doctor, check lab results or test results, schedule or cancel appointments, receive health reminders such as scheduling routine checkups and exams, and access a health summary.

According to Albert Chan, M.D., family medicine physician with Sutter-affiliated Palo Alto Medical Foundation:

"Through the MyChart app, we're giving patients the tools they need right at their fingertips. Access to the MyChart app complements a variety of unique patient needs and lifestyles. With the ability to view personal health data and connect a patient with his or her health care provider — where and when they need to — we're putting a patient's health record in the palms of his or her hands."

Sutter is using a network of social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, as well as its own website to market the new tool to its doctors and patients. Moreover, videos that feature patients describing how they use the service are already on YouTube. Around 400,000 patients that are already part of Sutter Health's My Health Online service can use the app, since they have a pre-existing connection to Sutter's online network. Chan expects a large number to start using the MyChart app very soon:

"We launched on Jan. 3 and we already have users posting messages on Facebook about how cool the new app is," said Chan. "So we expect people who were already using My Health Online to spread the word about the new iPhone app."

It is important to note that Sutter is not the first health system to offer MyChart to its patients. More than a dozen systems have already adopted the tool, including Oregon Health & Services University, Hawaiian Pacific Health, Baylor Clinic in Texas, and The Institute for Family Health in New York and others. The Dean Clinic in Wisconsin was the first health system to launch the app in September 2010. Project manager D.J. Curran explained:

"We see this is as a valuable service to our patients. The app gives patients fast, secure and convenient access to the most frequently used features of MyChart."

 Similarly, SSM Medical Groups in Missouri began offering the app to patients in October of last year. Since then, 485 patients have signed up for the service. 

In a previous post, I talked about how health care organizations can engage patients using technology in the new decade. The MyChart app seems like a very promising tool to achieve that.