Part 1 — the world traveler #1

healthbank — your medication history traveling the world

When we talked about the advantages of having all relevant health information in one place, we initially and mainly thought about walking from one doctor to the next, from one hospital and back to the general practitioner*.

However, the real value of having all medical records in one place really is travelling! I just recently had a very simple case: a very close friend of mine flew from Los Angeles (love you, D.!) into Berlin on a Saturday night — and forgot her thyroid medication**.

So, what did we do? We went to an emergency room on a Sunday morning — sat down for three hours to see a doctor that didn’t even run tests, but believed the patient that has had to take thyroid medication for more than five years already.

After that, we got the prescription printed, paid a ridiculous amount of money for this “consultation”, jumped in a car, drove around for another hour trying to find a pharmacy that’s open on a Sunday, and finally got the medication saving my friend’s life — or at least well-being for a couple of days.

healthbank could have made a difference here:

• What if the world traveler could have proven the pharmacist (or ER front desk) with an entire medication history that he or she has been taking thyroid medication for years? Or, even better:
• What if a world traveler could call a doctor at home, get a prescription issued electronically, fully compliant and safe — so the patient could simply fill this prescription in a foreign country? Like Estonians working or living in Finland?
• What if there were tele-medical consultations available for world travelers that seem to need medication for a disease they didn’t have a medical history for?

What if we could, by having all this information available in your healthbank account, ease the entire medication management for world travelers?

We would say: then it’s healthbank & YOUR “medical history” travelling with you wherever you go.

We know: there’s still a bunch of regulatory work to be done — but technically speaking: healthbank is ready to roll. Rock’n’roll.

In order to learn more about healthbank, join the Telegram Channel and visit the website.

* In the “old world”, patients got a whole bunch of printouts to carry around from one stop to the other — paper referrals, printed documentations and doctor’s letters, paper prescriptions (which needed to be on paper with a real signature to avoid scams etc — but that’s a whole new topic) and so on and so forth.

** Now, not everybody is familiar with thyroid medication. But let me tell you, it’s no spectacular medication whatsoever: it’s incredibly simple and cheap, it doesn’t have remarkable side effects, it’s actually rather boring. It’s not even fun to take: there’s no high feeling, there’s no giggling, no dizziness. BUT: for those people who have to take it, it’s essential to survive — and for that it’s necessary to get a prescription from a doctor.