Dear HIFA colleagues,
HIFA has benefited immensely from the contributions of HIFA member Richard Fitton, an advocate of universal access to electronic health records. Richard helped us recognise that access to electronic health records represents an important and previously overlooked component in the HIFA remit: access to reliable electronic records is a vital part of the information that patients and healthcare providers need to protect their own health and the health of others.
Richard and co-author Venkatesh Karthikeyan have published an article in the latest issue of the World Medical Journal:
https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/WMJ_2026_03_Empowering-Pa...
They conclude as follows:
'The patient who can read, annotate, and contribute to their own problem-oriented record is not a threat to the clinical enterprise; they are its most reliable collaborator. By bridging the gap between passive data storage and active therapeutic partnership, universal access to EHRs acts as a foundational intervention that promotes health equity, literacy, and safety. As the technological infrastructure for universal access matures – and as the policy architecture supporting data portability, standardisation, and dynamic consent is progressively constructed – the fundamental obligation of healthcare providers and health systems is to resist the inertia of historical paternalism and embrace the empirically demonstrated, ethically mandated reality. After all, the patient is not merely the subject of the health record but, in every meaningful sense, its author.'
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org