Imagine being in a medical emergency either at home or anywhere in the world and the paramedic or doctor could easily, with your permission, access all your medical information to help with your care.

Volunteer EMT Hilary Canty, Orcas Island Fire and Rescue Division Chief Mik Preyz, and community member Pat Hunt have been working for the past 18 months to put a plan in place so that residents of Orcas can do that.

Through a Washington State Health Authority grant of five million dollars to Peace Health, who runs St. Joseph’s Hospital, island residents will be able to participate in the Shared Care Plan.

“We have had to solve several severe medical problems on the island where the lack of medical records has made it more difficult,” Preyz said. “We need to access medical information easily and quickly.”

The Shared Care Plan allows residents to organize and store vital health information on a password protected Internet website. A printout can be kept in a wallet, or car and taken to a medical appointment or accessed on the Internet.

“Each person decides what information they want to share and who has access to it,” Preyz said. “The data can be viewed by only whom you authorize. You can restrict it to just paramedics or Dr. Sullivan. All the family physicians on the island have been invited to be involved. It means as paramedics, we will have access to the information if the patient gives us permission without calling the physicians at 2 a.m.”

The grant goal is to have 30,000 people signed up. By next month, Canty, Preyz and Hunt hope to have someone in each of the medical offices on the island to help people put their information on the site. There will also be someone available daily at the Eastsound Fire Station to help. Pharmacists and lab technicians can add recent medications and results on an ongoing basis to the patient’s medical record.

“Lab work will be uploaded, if you give them permission,” Canty said. “St. Joe’s will upload all your appointments, blood work etc. when you are discharged from the hospital. The doctor will upload all the information from your procedure or hospitalization.”

Medications past and present, allergies, drug interactions, diagnoses and immunizations, hospitalizations, procedures, health indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugars, end of life wishes and religious preferences would be available to medical personnel and family either all or in part at the discretion of the patient.

The security level for the website is state-of-the-art. The data is encrypted to a secure site on a secure server. Each user has a password known only to them. Every time anyone accesses the health records, there is an audit trail of who they are and when they logged on to the site.

“This is a patient driven online medical record,” Canty said. “You have complete control of what is seen and who sees it.”

The first goal is to get higher health need patients, those with numerous health issues, and the elderly signed up.

“Having this information available will help EMS make better decisions about care,” Canty said. “Should we fly the person off the island or not? Having the information will help us save lives.”