My Health Record Consumer Case Study – Kelly Powell

[MUSIC PLAYING] My name’s Kelly and my son’s Henry. He’s 11 and a half weeks old. I’ve been coming to this practice since I was eight years old, so about 29 years that would be I’ve got an autoimmune disease called Lupus, and that requires a bit of ongoing management. I hadn’t heard about My Health Record until Dr Makeham told me about it and it was actually surprisingly easy. I thought it would be hard but I logged into the website and it probably only took about five or 10 minutes. And, yeah it was easy. It doesn’t cost anything and it hardly takes any time to set up, so why wouldn’t you? My Health Record came up with Kelly when she had a new baby and I suggested that it would be great if she and Henry opened a record. Because Kelly has chronic conditions and I think having a number of different healthcare providers that have input into her care care is really empowering for her in my opinion to be able to have control over what goes into her own personal health record. And for her to be able to share that with people in the future. I need to see a rheumatologist regularly, and she’ll often refer to me another specialist. I’ve also had to see on and off a psychologist. It’s there for the GP to see without me having to carry around files and things like that. It’s all in one central place. I’ve signed Henry up for it and from birth; all his records are going to be there. So by the time he is 18 he’s going to have a full medial history. I find myself thinking a lot more about my health and what I can do to make sure I stay healthy because it’s suddenly a lot more important than it used to be. You can’t prevent sickness happening but you can your best to minimise its impact. So I’ve got to stay on top of my health for his sake.