Book Asserts: What Our Healthcare System Doesn't Know Could Kill You!

MIAMI, March 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- "Many medical practices still maintain patient health records the way they did in Babylonian days; our nation cannot afford not to change that," asserts Joseph H. Kanter, entrepreneur-turned-patient activist. "Too often doctors treat patients from anecdotal evidence and not concrete science and facts."

In his recently published book, Your Life, Your Health: Share Your Health Data Electronically – It May Save Your Life, he proposes a bold vision for developing a digital Learning Health System (LHS) that will transform healthcare.  Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell  and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole each praised Kanter's work in this area.   

"Over the next decade, our nation will invest $30 billion in taxpayer funds and perhaps $150 billion in private funds in health information technology," asserts Kanter, founder and chairman of the Joseph H. Kanter Family Foundation (www.KanterHealth.org).  "This unprecedented investment in health IT holds the potential to save lives, improve the quality of life, and extend life.  The LHS, in which digitized health data is securely shared, will empower us to learn from the real-world health experiences of millions of patients. Doctors and patients will be able to make decisions knowing scientifically what works best for every disease for every patient. This will be the greatest health system innovation in a thousand years. However, the government's efforts thus far have been too slow and incomplete. We need private enterprise to take this over."

As a result, the data of diagnosis, treatment and results can be analyzed to secure scientific data upon which to base health decisions, deliver medical breakthroughs, pinpoint which clinical trials and tests should be funded, and help focus doctors on delivering less costly and more uniform treatments.

Kanter has been a patient advocate ever since he was diagnosed with prostate cancer almost two decades ago and learned that doctors couldn't agree on the best course of treatment due, in part, to a lack of shared data.  He has been at the forefront of championing the LHS since forming his philanthropic foundation 15 years ago.   The healthcare watchdog cautions: "If we fail to ultimately work together to create systems that interoperate so that data can be shared to enable rapid learning, we will be wasting  these massive investments."

SOURCE Media Connect