Medical Memory

Medical Memory is a database diary program designed to enable users to easily enter, track, and retrieve information regarding the day to day health care, symptoms, and treatment of their whole family. We think of Medical Memory loosely as a “Quicken” for health care. Medical Memory was designed and produced by Pipsqueak Productions, LLC who retains all rights.

Medical Memory is a “sticky” Web application ideal for a medically oriented site. One revenue model proposes that Medical Memory be made into a branded application to supplement several of the large well-funded medical sites in exchange for a licensing fee. Alternative purchasers of Medical Memory services include HMOs, insurance companies, large medical non-profits, doctor groups, and others who have an interest in supporting proactive medical consumers.

Currently, Medical Memory exists as a working prototype “proof of concept” created as a stand-alone, cross-platform application. Now we need executive talent and further funding to create and market a robust Web version of this application. Pipsqueak conceived and authored the application, controls all intellectual property rights, and owns the domain name “MedicalMemory.com”

Click on the screen above to open a Web-linked demo of the Medical Memory application.

Let’s say that you go to your doctor. You talk about several things that you’ve been concerned about, and the doctor adds a couple more. He takes your blood pressure and listens to your heart rate. Perhaps he orders a blood test and prescribes some medication. He gives you a tetanus injection. Perhaps he also refers you to a specialist. Three months from now, how much of this visit are you likely to remember? Will you remember all of your doctor’s advice? Will you be able to recall the name of the medication he prescribed? Unless you have the bottle of pills in your hand, it’s unlikely that you will be able to come up with the prescription number or the refill quantity. You may have written down the phone number of the specialist, but will you remember your blood pressure or heart rate? How about that cholesterol test that he ordered? And what was that injection, anyway? And how will you communicate all of the information about that doctor visit to that specialist? Perhaps your doctor has communicated with the specialist about your exact medical history. Or perhaps he was just too busy and expects you to fill in the details.

Perhaps, in the past, you could trust your doctor to capture and record all this information for you. But today, with the ascendancy of HMOs and specialists, patients need to take more and more responsibility for their own health care.

Unrecorded, this information dissipates from your memory just like the myriad of other details in your day to day life. But this isn’t part of the trifling debris of a normal life. This is critical health care information. Perhaps, in the past, you could trust your doctor to capture and record all this information for you. But today, with the ascendancy of HMOs and specialists, patients need to take more and more responsibility for their own health care. And a lot of that control starts with accurate record keeping.

Medical records are spread all over the place. Your personal doctor and the specialists that you see have different records of your visits, test results, and procedures. Some of your records reside in hospitals or clinics and might not make it back to your primary physician at all. Other information, such as drug allergies and family medical history, might not be recorded anywhere.

When the task is to keep track of medical records for a whole family, the problems are multiplied. And sometimes, you must switch doctors. Then it often seems as if you have to start your medical history all over from scratch.

Medical Memory makes it easy to capture health-related information. The current stand-alone version works well, but it’s only a proof of concept. In the future, Medical Memory will exist as a Web application with expanded functionality, to allow users to not only record and track their medical history, but also to follow medical billing and insurance payments, check drug conflicts, chart changes in vital statistics, track fitness and nutrition goals, and collaborate with doctors in entering and sharing important medical records. Patients together with their doctors will be able to create and maintain instantly available and comprehensive medical records.

Pipsqueak has used its expertise in interface design to create a program which is easy to use without sacrificing the inherent complexity of the type of information which needs to be recorded. We’ve used the latest educational theories to create a scaffolded application which supports the novice and yet doesn’t hinder the expert. We think that Medical Memory is quick to learn, effective at its task, and satisfying to use.

Users are rarely required to enter any specific data. Usually, the only required fields are the titles. Otherwise, users are expected to only fill in fields which they believe are relevant. This approach allows users to quickly create simple events, but it also allows them to create events which capture the full complexity of a thorny medical issue.

While we think that the existing version of Medical Memory is an excellent user-oriented prototype, we really need additional development help to create the kind of industrial strength application that we envision. The industrial strength version of Medical Memory for the Web, capable of handling the demands of hundreds of thousands of users, complete with all the security and encryption that must be applied, is beyond our company’s resources.

Pipsqueak’s strength is in creating and fixing user-oriented new media projects. We are seeking business expertise to complete this project and successfully launch and market it.