President Trump on Wednesday announced the development of a health care records system that he said would allow Americans to more easily and broadly share their personal health information with health care providers.
“Today the dream of easily transportable, electronic medical records finally becomes a reality,” Mr. Trump said at a White House event that included the leaders of dozens of technology companies.
The administration is working with some of the largest American companies on the record-keeping system, including Google, Amazon, Apple and OpenAI. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will oversee the effort.
Many health care providers already allow patients to upload their medical information and schedule appointments through phone apps and online portals.
Mr. Trump and top federal health officials said the information-sharing program would be an effective replacement for a system that often involves arduous and redundant paperwork that patients fill out when visiting different providers.
The system, which aims in part to help Americans with diabetes and obesity, would also include artificial intelligence assistants to help Americans monitor symptoms and navigate health care options.
But the effort to push Americans to upload sensitive medical information to a more centralized system also raised questions about how the Trump administration would ensure privacy. Mr. Trump appeared aware of those concerns on Wednesday.
“The system will be entirely opt-in, and there will be no centralized government-run database, which everyone is always concerned about,” Mr. Trump said. “People are very, very concerned about personal records. They want to keep them very quiet, and that’s their choice.”
“It will be absolutely quiet,” Mr. Trump added.
But some privacy and technology experts said the program, while admirable, would still rely on voluntary participation by private companies. The announcement, they added, did not offer much detail about how patients would be able to access their medical histories in ways that would keep those records private.
Easy availability of health records can run afoul of laws that protect privacy, including the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.
“It’s not something that can be done overnight without changing existing regulations and resolving the tension with existing laws,” said Peter K. Jackson, a cybersecurity and privacy lawyer at the Los Angeles firm Greenberg Glusker.
Others said that previous efforts by the federal government to pressure technology companies into adopting these kinds of standards had not been successful. They generally “have proven to be ineffective,” said David Holtzman, a privacy and technology expert and the retired founder of HITprivacy, a consulting firm. He also noted that much of the system Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday was already in place.
What is also unclear, Mr. Holzman said, is whether a patient uploading information to a commercial app would be protected. While the technology firms that work directly with insurance companies and providers fall under the federal privacy laws, the makers of third-party apps that are not affiliated with a health provider or insurer do not fall under these laws if someone voluntarily shares private medical information.
The Trump administration has already moved aggressively to access the personal information of Americans. Mr. Trump made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Amy Gleason, a former health care executive and the current acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has sought vast amounts of personal data while gutting the federal bureaucracy.
If patients opt into the system, Ms. Gleason said, they will be able to use QR codes to transfer their medical and insurance information to providers and doctors. An artificial intelligence assistant would then help the patients assess information they receive from doctors.
Ms. Gleason said the system would “not replace doctors,” but would “fill in the gap between visits.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Reed Abelson covers the business of health care, focusing on how financial incentives are affecting the delivery of care, from the costs to consumers to the profits to providers.
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