Answers /
Can patients own their own medical records?
Legally, patients have the right to access their records, but the data usually lives in institutional systems. New decentralized approaches change this: personal data stores like Solid Pods let patients hold their records themselves and grant or revoke provider access. EverBetter Me™ uses this model to give patients genuine ownership and portability.
Last updated: July 2026
What’s the difference between access and ownership?
Access means the institution holds your records and must show them to you on request — a right guaranteed by HIPAA and strengthened by the ONC 21st Century Cures Act, which prohibits information blocking with penalties up to $1 million per violation (HHS, 2024).
Ownership means the records live in a store you control. You decide who sees them, for how long, and you can revoke access — without asking anyone’s permission. Until recently, no mainstream healthcare platform was architected this way.
What is a Solid Pod and how does it enable ownership?
A Solid Pod is a personal, portable data store developed at MIT by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. It holds any type of health data — lab results, clinical notes, imaging reports, genomics, wearable readings, care plans — under the owner’s control.
EverBetter is the first healthcare platform to fully implement personal data vaults using Solid. Providers request access through the platform; patients grant or revoke it. If a patient changes practices, their data travels with them.
Why does patient ownership benefit practices too?
Decentralized storage eliminates the centralized honeypot that makes traditional EHR databases prime breach targets. And trust built on genuine data control is more durable than trust built on switching friction — patients stay because they want to, not because their data is stuck.
Patients who engage with their own health data consistently between visits are 3.4× more likely to stay with a practice for two or more years (Accenture, 2024).