Partnership between Apple and U.S. health systems could increase availability of patient data, disrupt healthcare

Executives from private U.S. healthcare foundations argue that Apple's partnership with 13 health systems that would allow Apple to download onto its various devices the electronic health data of those systems' patients could disrupt the healthcare system by liberating healthcare data for new uses, including empowering patients. They write that granting patients access to their own electronic data with the help of facilitators like Apple creates opportunities to improve healthcare and health in the following ways:

• Participating patients would no longer be dependent on the bureaucracies of big health systems or on understaffed physician offices to make their own data available for further care; and
• The liberation of patients' data makes it possible for consumer-oriented third parties to use that data (with patients’ permission) to provide new and useful services that help patients manage their own health and make better healthcare choices.

However, they also believe this new world of data opens the door to opportunities for fraud and abuse.