Electronic health records : organizational, regional, national, or worldwide?

In recent days Google launched in USA the Google Health service as a way to record and to make available personal medical information. Registered users can introduce and access to medical information in any place and at any time. On the other hand, health care providers can upload medical information and test results automatically. Unlike the USA, the Law in Portugal and in the Europe are more restrictive concerning the open access to medical or clinical data. Portugal is making a great effort in the area of information technologies (e.g. through the governmental technological program) that in turn has having a significant impact in the health care organizations like the hospitals and the regional health administrations. The electronic health record is receiving a great attention and various projects are on the ground. Nevertheless, some issues should be taken into account in order to enable, in the future, an effective interchange of health information among the different organizations and the government. In this paper it will be discussed some ideas around the open and global access to medical information.Financial support for this study was received from the FCT project PTDC/EIA/72819/2006 and from the Algoritmi research center