By Cassandra Willyard

In the developing world, access to a patient’s medical records can mean the difference between life and death. Poor countries sometimes have high rates of AIDS and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, which require complicated drug regimens. To treat people with these illnesses, physicians need to see lab results; they need to know what drugs the patient has already taken and whether they worked. In many poor countries, however, medical records are hard to come by. If paper charts exist, they are often illegible, incomplete or inaccessible. (Click here to continue reading)

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