The VA and Medicare recently launched the Blue Button initiative where patients can “download their claims and medical information in a common format.” This format is a plain ASCII text file with the purpose being to allow the information to be read or printed on any device. A pretty slick Adobe Air application can be installed on the patient’s computer allow him/her to navigate through the information along with some other nice features e.g., showing a timeline of medication use.
According to the White House, Blue Button data “can be used to create portable medical histories that will facilitate dialog with Veterans’ and beneficiaries’ health care providers, caregivers, and other trusted individuals or entities.”[1]. This is certainly laudable, but is an ASCII text file the ideal format for sharing this data? To the right is a small sample of a Blue Button text file.[2]
While the text file is relatively easy for a human to read it is difficult to a computer to ingest and integrate this information in a meaningful way due to the lack of an easily parsable format. It would be nice if this information was also downloadable as an XML file (we are after all in the 21st century) – relying solely on a 1970’s style report for data sharing leaves much to be desired.
A reason given for not using XML or other more parsable format is due to the desire to avoid arguments over what standard to use. Why not just develop an XSD specifically for this Blue Button data; a standard after all is implied in the format of the report. This would have made the data more actionable for applications and systems that could use the data.
While improvement could be made to Blue Button for better data sharing it certainly is a worthwhile initiative that can save lives. Having the data in an ASCII text format certainly has advantages as no specialized software is required to view it. Providing the data in an XML format should be an addition to, not a replacement, for the text file.
