EHRs on the Run

E-health records may serve a valuable purpose outside hospitals and physicians' offices. The organizers of last year's Detroit Free Press Marathon, held in October, collected medical information from participants prior to the race and stored it on a secure server, reports Scientific American.

On race day, medical staff were given laptops with access to runners' health records and were able to treat those in distress using that information. To maintain confidentiality, the records matched runners' bib numbers, the article says. The purpose of the project was to speed race-day treatment and to study injury patterns so organizers can better prepare for future events.

A marathoner myself, I can appreciate how having your information easily accessible to medical personnel would speed your treatment. After all, the very last thing you can or want to do in the midst of a marathon is try to explain -- coherently -- your health history. And if comprehensive, it sure beats the minimal information that can be engraved on RoadID tags or other forms of identification.

So how realistic is this for athletics -- from the community 5K to the 40,000-plus runner marathon majors -- the workplace and beyond? What are the costs? And in the end, will it really affect patient outcomes?