537 - Empowering Patients: What Changes When Patients Have Access to Their Own Health Records?
When patients take control of their own health data, the healthcare system shifts. In a world where digital tools are reshaping nearly every corner of life, general practice is stepping into a new phase. One where transparency, shared responsibility, and patient empowerment take centre stage.
In this episode of Talking HealthTech, Peter Birch speaks with Jayne Thompson and Dr. Max Mollenkopf, about how giving patients access to their own health records could reshape the relationship between GPs and patients, and how digital tools are slowly changing healthcare for doctors and patients alike.
Empowering Patients: How Access to Health Records is Transforming General Practice
The way patients and GPs interact is evolving fast. With tools like digital health records, patient portals, and cloud technology, people now have more access to their own health information than ever before. In this episode of Talking HealthTech, we explore how these changes are playing out in everyday Australian clinics, what clinicians are experiencing firsthand, and what the future might look like for medical software, with a focus on MediRecords and its approach to patient empowerment.
The Changing Dynamic Between GPs and Patients
For the longest time, primary care followed a simple and familiar model: patients entrusted their health entirely to their GP, and health records were kept firmly on the clinic’s side of the desk. But rising health literacy, consumer expectations, and the availability of digital tools have shifted the balance.
Dr. Max Mollenkopf, a Newcastle GP and practice owner, describes his approach, where patients are recognised as informed, selective consumers of health services who expect more than the traditional, one-way flow of information.
Digital natives and younger families are particularly eager for this empowerment. But even long-standing patients, those who Dr. Mollenkopf describe as, “aren’t particularly keen on change but trust you with their health”, are coming on the journey when engaged thoughtfully. The message is clear: patient engagement is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s becoming central to effective primary care.
From Static Records to Proactive Care
Traditional Practice Management Systems (PMS) were designed largely for clinicians. Features were prioritised for efficiency, billing, and regulatory compliance. Any patient-facing aspects, like appointment bookings, for instance, were often included as afterthoughts.
Now, as consumer expectations rise and new technology makes data sharing safer and simpler, that focus is shifting. Products like the MediRecords Engage patient portal aim to bring the patient into the digital workflow.
“We really wanted it to be so deeply embedded with the existing clinical workflows already being done,” explains Thompson. “I didn’t want it to feel like it was an extra step to engage with the patient.”
With properly integrated patient portals, patients feel more informed and involved, and clinicians save time on calls or paper shuffling, leading to an improvement in overall continuity of care.
Workflow Integration and “Shared By Default” Data
A critical challenge is embedding these patient empowerment approaches into clinical workflows without disruption. For patient portals to succeed in general practice, they must offer value to both sides. As Thompson points out:
“With clinicians it's really about how do we make it the best possible workflow with the least possible effort. That’s something we will continue to work on.”
One promising trend is “shared by default” data: giving patients automatic access to results, letters, and consultation summaries. By embracing this open approach before government mandates force the issue, clinics can maintain trust and relevance. This is more than box-ticking; it signals respect for patients’ rights and intelligence.
Tools That Make Care Easier
When new technology and systems are poorly designed, they can create more stress and lead to mistakes, causing more harm than good. Everyone therefore acknowledges that the best digital tools are the ones that truly support the needs of both clinicians and patients, without adding extra hassle or confusion.
The Engage patient portal from MediRecords, for example, is custom-branded to make it feel like an extension of each surgery, not an impersonal corporate product. Patients can see letters, blood results, and care reminders. More importantly, clinicians can set actionable tasks, such as a flu vaccine due, a repeat assessment, and/or a follow-up, directly in the patient’s “to do” list.
Dr. Mollenkopf is already sharing consultation summaries, results and action items with patients, resulting in better patient engagement, stronger patient loyalty, and fewer slip-ups or forgotten plans.
“We started out responding by using our AI scribe and generating patient-facing summaries… and just emailing it to patients which they just froth over. They loved it.”
Digital Solutions for Forms and Workflow Management
One major drag on clinical efficiency is paperwork. Making digitising forms, whether health assessments or administrative consent, an obvious step for patient portals. The goal is a seamless, sometimes even contactless experience: book online, fill in pre-appointment forms, complete assessments remotely, and see all results logged directly in the record. Thompson describes the ambition:
“To be able to digitise clinical forms for health assessments and have that flow back into the patient’s record as well as administrative forms, then you could have almost a totally contactless, frictionless experience.”
While face-to-face care remains crucial for many conditions, digitising all that can be digitised makes space for GPs and nurses to focus on what truly requires their skills.
AI in the Practice Management System
Artificial intelligence is making its mark not just in patient-facing health apps, but within core clinical systems. Automatic summarisation of patient histories helps clinicians keep up with increasingly long and complex medical notes, especially as more information gets digitised.
As Thompson describes, automating administrative workflows, maintaining quality data, and supporting patient engagement are all areas ripe for productive AI adoption:
“We created an AI patient summary, which pulls out and summarises the clinical consultation as well as showing you any recent results or correspondence… That’s kind of a bit of a teaser of what we’re hoping to deliver with Evolve.”
The Ripple Effect of Patient Empowerment and System Efficiency
Empowering patients with access to their health records has ripple effects across the care continuum. It improves coordination between GPs, specialists, emergency departments, and other providers. Patients travelling or in crisis can quickly share their medication lists and history. Families supporting elderly relatives can keep track of test results and care plans without constant phone calls.
As Dr. Mollenkopf notes, recounting a recent patient’s experience:
“She pulled out her portal, she showed them what her creatinine was doing, what her sodium was doing. She could show them the list of all the medications, she could show them the referral letter I’d written to the transplant team before that had some of her background data… and it was really streamlined and really simple.”
This is exactly the kind of frictionless handover My Health Record aspired to provide, except it’s happening at the clinic level, custom-fit to local workflow and patient needs.
What GP Clinics Need Next
Independent GP clinics have always faced the challenge of doing more with less. Today, the expectations are higher: productivity, patient engagement, and compliance all matter. Digital tools can help, but only if they make workflows simpler, keep data secure, and fit with the reality of everyday medicine.
Tools that drive genuine productivity, enable true patient empowerment, and respect the intelligence of both clinician and patient are likely to win out in the long run.
Digital Empowerment as the Baseline
Healthcare consumers have changed, and there is a need for general practice to keep up and change with them. Giving patients meaningful, secure, and actionable access to their health records is no longer an optional extra. It’s shaping up as the new normal for high-quality care.
Clinics that embrace this shift, integrating digital tools thoughtfully and efficiently, will be better placed to attract and retain patients, reduce frustration, and focus on what really matters: supporting healthier lives. As healthcare transforms, the clinics, vendors, and policymakers who respect patient intelligence, prioritise simplicity, and streamline workflow will set the pace for the sector.
As Dr. Mollenkopf concludes:
“Ultimately, activating patients and giving them their data just makes everything run more seamlessly and empowers people. And that’s what we need to do in the modern age.”
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3wTerrific piece and a timely reminder of the value of AI in surfacing what truly matters to both patients and clinicians. Having spent much of my career delivering enterprise clinical systems across health settings, it has been unexpectedly liberating to experience the simplicity and personal utility of AI and LLMs in helping my own family navigate a complex care journey spanning aged care, primary care, multiple hospitals and a range of specialists. These tools have helped us connect the dots, from discharge summaries and clinician updates to informal family reflections, revealing a more cohesive and manageable understanding of both current health status and longer-term trends. This is not about replacing the remarkable work of clinicians. It is about enriching the clarity and continuity of conversations across the continuum, supporting shared decision-making and better recognising the critical longitudinal role of the GP. That is real empowerment.