Healthcare Informatics journalist Gabe Perna reported in a March 6th blog post the true story of Pennsylvania resident Beth Schindele, who says she saved her father’s life by using the medical information in iBlueButton on her smartphone.

According to the blog post, Schindele used iBlueButton during her father’s recent hospitalization to prevent doctors from discharging him with a prescription for Coumadin, a medication which had been prescribed to his father in error and which had been discontinued for over two years. The drug is a blood thinner often prescribed for atrial fibrillation, a heart disorder closely associated with stroke, a condition which Schindele's father had suffered from two years prior this last hospitalization. Schindele who directs a Delaware program that helps physicians implement electronic health records, argued that the drug showing on her father's chart should not be prescribed again, as it was erroneously done during a prior hospitalization. Standing in her father’s hospital room, she called up three years’ worth of his Medicare health records using iBlueButton on her smartphone. The app helped reveal that her father had previously had an EKG with a normal diagnosis associated with the test and not that of Atrial Fibrillation, and that he had not been treated with Coumadin in the last two years.

Confronted with this information, her father’s doctors reluctantly admitted their error and canceled the prescription. It’s a good thing they did. Just five hours after being discharged from the hospital, Schindele’s father fell while trying to maneuver his walker up the stairs at home, lacerating his head and wrist. Had he been taking Coumadin at the time, Schindele is convinced, he may have died from uncontrolled bleeding (a hazard associated with the drug).

"Because I had the data in my hands (with iBlueButton), I was… instrumental in saving his life," Schindele says.You can read Beth Schindele’s full story here: http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/blogs/gabriel-perna/when-blue-button-saved-life

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