RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ — VitalKey, a leader in the rapidly growing field of personal health records, announced its introduction of the Pink Key, a personal health records tool for breast cancer patients, survivors and their families. Like its flagship VitalKey, the Pink Key provides and regularly updates a person’s complete medical records and houses them on a computer “thumb drive” that can be carried on a key ring and is accessible at all times by patients and health-care professionals.

More Americans die each year from medical errors than from breast cancer, colon cancer, and vehicle accidents combined. To ensure that medical caregivers have accurate, current information — when and where they need it — a group of Virginia doctors invented the VitalKey, a medical records management service that provides consumers with a digital copy of their actual medical records. They’ve expanded on these capabilities with the new Pink Key.

“Like our VitalKey, the Pink Key is an invaluable tool to help people navigate the increasingly complex, and expensive, world of health care,” said Tom Blue, VitalKey’s chief operating officer. “With multiple physician and specialist relationships, and frequent changes in treatment options and protocols, breast cancer patients, survivors and their families face especially daunting challenges that the Pink Key was designed to help
solve.”

The Pink Key offers these benefits and many additional capabilities, under the direction of its inventor, Dr. James Khatcheressian, breast cancer specialist and health services researcher at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, Virginia. He authored the definitive review of supportive care strategies for breast cancer patients in Oncology and is lead author for the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s practice guidelines for breast cancer follow-up — the national practice guideline source for U.S. oncologists. Dr. Khatcheressian also has worked extensively with cancer patients at Massey to provide them helpful informational tools and developed a web-based concept for these tools that led to his partnership with VitalKey and joint development of the Pink Key.

Special features of the Pink Key include:

• Tools to track medical appointments and procedures, including setting reminders.
• Content written and maintained by Dr. Khatcheressian about all facets of breast cancer, including diagnosis, treatment and survivorship issues.
• Links to special content areas on the VitalKey web site, at http://www.vitalkey.com, that provide additional information that has been provided by or approved by cancer specialists.
• Access to VitalKey medical liaison staffers, who currently are registered nurses with supplementary training in breast cancer issues. These staff members help Pink Key subscribers by working with them to gather and enter medical records on their Pink Keys, and call subscribers for periodic updates to their Keys.

All VitalKeys, including the Pink Key, can be lifesavers if their holders are ever involved in an emergency care situation and unable to speak or otherwise communicate with medical professionals who are not familiar with their medical records, medications, allergies and other special medical needs. VitalKeys contain all such records and may be accessed from virtually any computer; Internet access is not required to open a VitalKey.

For further information about the Pink Key or VitalKey, go to http://www.vitalkey.com or call 877 VITALKEY (877-848-2553).

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