Minder Binder

Aren't medical bloggers ambitious? Galen's formed a company and has a useful new product: the Medi Binder for patients to keep track of meds, docs, allergies, labs...

As Galen originally wrote:

think of the hapless octogenarian with who is supposed to remember about 14 medications and an extensive history of conditions and surgeries. Damn near impossible.

I'm sure your thinking the information should be in the chart, right? Yeah, like you can read your partner's handwriting. Hard enough to read my own. Plus if you're a specialist, you've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting any information prior to the consult.

Now this may be a minor annoyance in the office, but in an ER it can be downright dangerous. As continuity of care becomes the exception rather than the rule, something has to be done to fill the communication gap.

He's selling to patients, but I hope he also targets hospitals, GPs, any health care facility. They should just be handing out the MediBinder to complicated patients. I bet in the long run, hospitals would come out ahead in terms of time saved, faxes and phone bills decreased, and mistakes averted.