Study lets patients help write medical notes, Google Doc style

The open records movement is moving beyond transparent, to interactive. That is, what if you could not just see your doctor's medical notes but actually comment on them and contribute to them? As you do, say, when you collaborate online with colleagues on a project in Google Docs? That's the next step, says Jan Walker, co-director of the "OpenNotes" project and a researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess and Harvard Medical School. With a new $450,000 grant from The Commonwealth Fund, researchers plan to develop and test "OurNotes," an interface that will invite patients to contribute to their own medical notes.