Blue Button
[2] Data from Blue Button-enabled sites can be used to create portable medical histories that facilitate dialog among health care providers, caregivers, and other trusted individuals or entities.
The Blue Button initiative began during the Markle Foundation Work Group on Consumer Engagement meeting in New York City on January 27, 2010.
[5] The Department of Defense (DoD) first provided secure on-line access to patient health information in December 2009 with its TriCare Online (TOL) portal.
[10] VA Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Peter L. Levin, also an attendee at the Markle Work Group meeting, described trying to balance the benefits of data standards with getting a solution to patients quickly.
[5] In August 2010, President Barack Obama announced that Veterans could soon "go to the VA website, click a simple blue button, download or print your personal health records, so you have them when you need them and can share them with your doctors .
[15][16] The framework on which Blue Button is based—including patient empowerment, data security and privacy protection – draws heavily on work by the Markle Foundation’s collaborative of industry stakeholders.
[22] Users of Department of Defense's TRICARE Online can use the Blue Button to download their medications, allergies, and lab results as a PDF or text file.
[24] The simplicity of the Blue Button format allows users to carry their health information which ever way suits them—print, thumb drive, or on their smart phone.
[42] For example: In December 2011, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management announced that it had requested all federal employee health benefit plans to add the Blue Button function to their patient portals.
[48] FEHB’s health benefit plans are offered by more than 200 insurance carriers and serve approximately eight million federal employees (including Members of Congress), their families, and retirees.
[48] In May 2012, the Obama administration announced the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows which will focus on five program areas including expanding Blue Button capabilities nationwide.
The third-prize winner, InstantPHR, is a web app that uses data downloaded through Blue Button to automatically populate personal health records in Microsoft HealthVault.
[52] In January 2013, ONC released the Blue Button+ Implementation Guide, offering guidance and a toolkit for both data holders (such as health care providers and insurers) and third-party application developers seeking to add this functionality to their products and services.
The current version—the Blue Button 2.0 Implementation Guide issued in 2018—includes the FHIR (Fast Health Interoperable Resources) standard for transmission of data.
[55] SMART Platforms, Harvard Medical School, and Boston Children’s Hospital built a proof-of-concept Blue Button+ app called Growth-tastic.
[57] Blue Button is part of a larger "My Data Initiative" that aims to empower consumers with the tools and information they need to make optimal choices.
[60] The National Institute of Standards and Technology awarded a contract to HyperTek Inc. to work with developers and users to expand the Green Button initiative.
[61] In healthcare, there is a related proposal for a Green Button, as a way for doctors to use summarized patient data for real time decision making at the point of care.
