In The News

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The Gelt Complex

Online Cure for an Entrepreneurial Bug

By Michael Jacobs
The Jewish Times

Attention Medical Personnel: A little plastic card could be your most important tool in a life-or-death emergency.

For those who carry it in a wallet or other conspicuous place, the card is the key to their personal medical history and could help avoid a deadly mistake.

With the log-in information on the card, a doctor, nurse, emergency medical technician or just some good Samaritan can access an online database that includes any existing medical problems, a list of prescription medications with their dosages and the dates the patient started and stopped taking them, allergies, physicians, pharmacies and emergency contacts.

In short, everything medical personnel should need to make the right decisions if the patient is unconscious – as well as nothing they don’t need, such as Social Security numbers and other information that could expose the patient to the victimization of identity theft.

And it’s all accessible via computer, personal digital assistant or cellphone.

The card is the product of a 2-month-old company started by a 25-year-old lifelong Atlantan, Mark Holland.

“The process is extremely private and secure,” he said.

The company is MedsFile.com, which is conveniently accessible through the Web site of the same name.

Unlike something like MedicAlert bracelets and the emergency devices that allow an elderly woman who has fallen and can’t get up to call for help, MedsFile is not designed exclusively for people with serious medical problems.

“I’m turning to everyday people,” Holland said. “Everyone can use it, I hope. For $3 per month, they should.”

Holland said the system works equally well for a person like his sister, who uses the MedsFile site just to store her list of emergency contacts, and for someone with a chronic condition who needs some convenient way to store and track a lengthy list of prescriptions.

Holland, who has a degree in business and computers from Indiana University and is working part time on a master of business administration degree at Georgia State, said bad experiences for his grandfathers inspired the creation of MedsFile.

In 1996, one grandfather, who was perfectly healthy in his early 80s, fell down the stairs while exiting a small plane and hit his head on the tarmac. He wasn’t conscious, and Holland’s grandmother couldn’t help the paramedics with his medical history. Back to In The News