Personal health record: taking back control of your medical records

There is no need to digitize your whole life in one go. Start with the documents that genuinely change how your situation is understood.

Start with the essentials

• current treatments, with their dosage and prescription date;
• documented allergies and intolerances;
• hospital discharge and surgery reports;
• recent lab and test results;
• imaging reports, along with the images when available;
• significant medical history and the contact details of the professionals who follow you.

A list typed in by the patient can be valuable, but it must be kept distinct from a document produced or validated by a professional. Keeping the author, date, facility and document type prevents a personal note from being mistaken for a medical report.

A timeline, not a storage unit

Your filing system should help answer one question: what has changed? Name files consistently, for example “2026-08-14_cardiology_report.pdf”, and avoid names like “scan-final-v2.pdf”. When the tool allows it, link each result to the event it belongs to: a consultation, a hospital stay, a change of treatment or a follow-up.

A timeline does not give information medical meaning on its own. Two lab values can only be compared if the methods, units and context allow it. Clinical interpretation must remain with the relevant professional.

Digital information can be outdated, incomplete or attributed to the wrong person. Before an important appointment, check the identity, date, author, facility, completeness and legibility of each document. If you spot an error, do not quietly correct it in the original document. Keep the original and ask the professional or facility concerned how to have it corrected.

In France, the Public Health Code governs patients’ access to their health information, and the CNIL points out that the sensitivity of health data justifies a specific legal framework. Neither principle means that every digital exchange is secure: sharing should go through an appropriate channel, to an identified recipient.

Sending your entire history to everyone you consult is neither always useful nor always wise. For a second opinion before surgery, the images, reports, relevant medical history and the clinical question may be enough. For an unrelated appointment, other documents have no reason to be shared.

Ask four questions before sharing anything:

• Who will receive the data?
• For what specific purpose?
• How long will it be kept?
• How can access be revoked, or deletion requested where that right applies?

Data minimization limits unnecessary exposure. It also makes the record easier to read: the professional gets to the information that answers the question at hand more quickly.

A summary can pick out dates, group documents together and produce an overview. It can also miss a nuance, misread a file or wrongly connect two events. You must therefore be able to trace every piece of information back to its source.

A good interface shows what comes from an original document, what was entered by the user and what was generated automatically. It allows corrections and flags uncertainty.

With MyTwin for patients, reports, lab results, imaging and letters are brought together in one place, then presented in a structured, chronological and readable way, with more accessible reading levels. It helps you keep track of your care and prepare your questions before an appointment, while medical interpretation remains with the professional who follows you. Kevin’s story — he sometimes waited two months for someone to explain his medical reports — shows why this matters.

1. List the portals, paper files and devices where your documents are kept.
2. Retrieve the priority documents first rather than importing every archive straight away.
3. Standardize file names with a date, a specialty and a document type.
4. Tell sources apart: medical document, wearable data, personal note or automated summary.
5. Prepare a short overview for your next appointment: treatments, recent events and questions.
6. Regularly review the access you have granted and remove duplicates without deleting useful originals.

The European Health Data Space regulation, which entered into force in March 2025, aims to make it easier to access and exchange health data across the European Union. It will be implemented gradually: not every announced capability will be available everywhere straight away.