Newsmaker Interview: Aneesh Chopra

What does the Blue Button mean for healthcare?

So this is just a simple idea. The Markle Foundation had a meeting in which they talked about personal health records and what will that future look like and what role would they play in it. And a number of folks, including Adam Bosworth, who was originally one of the founders of XML, said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a little button – maybe a blue button – that would allow patients to download a copy of their information and allow them to transport it wherever they go? Well, the VA, the DoD and Medicare all have repositories where patients enter in data. In the case of the VA, they augment it with clinical information, and more will come over time. So, we said, “Gosh, what a simple proposition. What are the methods by which someone’s been authenticated and already capable of looking at their information online? Once they’ve been authenticated and they’re in the system, why can’t they download?” And so, we put the challenge out there...