Is your allergy and adverse reaction information in your My Health Record?
21 November 2019
Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia through the National Allergy Strategy is collaborating with the Australian Digital Health Agency to make sure that information about your allergies is easy for doctors and other healthcare providers to find.
Having information about your allergies and adverse reactions in your My Health Record is an easy way for your healthcare providers to access your allergy information when they need it. In an emergency, it could be life saving for doctors to know if you are allergic to medications and food.
Currently 90% of pharmacies in Australia are connected to My Health Record, as well as 94% of public hospitals and 89% of general practices, who could access your allergy information in an emergency.
There are different ways that you and your healthcare provider can add allergy information into your My Health Record:
- You can enter information in your Personal Health Summary.
- Your GP can include information in your Shared Health Summary, after discussing this with you.
- Your clinical immunology/allergy specialist or other specialist can include information in an Event Summary when you have a consultation with them.
- The hospital will upload information in a Discharge Summary. For example, if you present to hospital due to an anaphylaxis.
Information in your My Health Record is protected by a range of security controls. You can control access to your record and decide what information is added and which healthcare providers can access it.
How to get into My Health Record
To activate your My Health Record online, you need to have a myGov account and link it to your record. The first time you log in, you will see the ‘Welcome page’ where you can set up your preferences and can decide whether two years’ worth of Medicare information is added to your record.
To find out how to set up a myGov account and link it to your My Health Record, visit the My Health Record website
What allergy information is in My Health Record and how to find it?
The allergies and adverse reactions table contains a list of your known allergies and adverse reactions. This information may come from healthcare providers or from your personal health summary.
To find your Allergies and adverse reactions and medicines information in My Health Record:
- Log in to My Health Record through myGov and select the record you want to access.
- Select ‘Documents’ from the top menu.
- Select ‘Medicines information’
- Select ‘Allergies & Adverse Reactions and Medicines Information’
Speak to your GP about including information on your allergies in your My Health Record. Your GP can include the information in their system into your record so other healthcare providers, like specialists and hospital doctors, can access the information too.
Encouraging GPs and specialists to upload information into your record
Patients are at the centre of all the work undertaken by the National Allergy Strategy. Our vision is that your My Health Record will become the trusted ‘source of truth’ for your allergy information, to help you receive the right care at the right time, with your safety front of mind.
We will continue to work with allergy specialists to help them access and upload information into My Health Record. The system is quite new and it will take time for all specialists to be able to upload information.
Kind regards,
A/Prof Richard Loh and Ms Karen Wong
Project Co-leads, National Allergy Strategy MHR Project