FAQ
What is the Goal of Mere Medical?
Mere Medical is a open-source personal health record that aims to make accessing and understanding your medical records simple and convenient. We believe that by making it easier to access and understand your medical records, we can empower individuals to take control of their health and make better decisions about their care.
We also believe that people should be able to have full control over their health data and where it is stored, and who it is shared with. This is why Mere is designed to be self-hosted and local-first, meaning that you can run it on your own server and have full control over your data on your own device. Sharing features are also designed to be opt-in, meaning that you have to explicitly choose to share your data with others.
Is Mere Free? How Does Mere Make Money?
Mere Medical is free to use and is an open-source project. We do not charge for the software, and we do not sell your data. We are committed to keeping Mere Medical free and open-source.
Mere does not make any money currently. We are open to donations to support hosting costs and development, but we are not currently a registered non-profit or a business. Mere is structured to be financially sustainable even without donations by staying lean.
Why is Chris Building Mere Medical for Free?
Chris is a medical student who is passionate about technology and its potential to improve healthcare, and currently the primary maintainer of Mere Medical.
Chris is frustrated with the current offerings available for patients to access their medical records and the lack of autonomy they provide over data ownership and privacy. Chris hopes that by building Mere Medical, he can show by example that it is possible to build a better, more user-friendly, and privacy-focused personal health record that puts the user first.
Chris, while studying medicine full-time, has managed to create a PHR during his free time. He hopes that his work serves as a benchmark, showing what should be possible to larger entities with more resources.
What are the Priorities for Mere Medical?
- User Choice, Control, and Ownership
- Data Privacy and Security
- Open Source and Interoperability
- User Experience, Convenience, and Empowerment
Who Owns Mere Medical?
Mere Medical is an open-source project that is owned by the community. Mere Medical is not a company. The project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License and is free to use and modify.
The primary maintainer is Christopher Fu, a medical student and ex-software engineer who started the project in 2022.
Is Mere Medical HIPAA Compliant?
No. Per the HHS, personal health records (PHRs) not offered by a HIPAA covered entity (like Mere) are not subject to HIPAA.
PHRs that are subject to the Privacy Rule are those that a covered health care provider
or health plan offers. Examples of PHRs that fall outside the scope of the Privacy Rule are
those offered by an employer (separate from the employer’s group health plan) or those made
available directly to an individual by a PHR vendor that is not a HIPAA covered entity. Some
stand-alone software packages or portable devices also may be available for use by individuals
as PHRs. However, while third parties may provide individuals with information to upload into
these tools, since they are solely in the custody of the individual and are not offered by or
connected to a third party, they will not be addressed in this document.
With that said, Mere Medical is designed to be secure and private, and we take data transparency, privacy, and security very seriously, offering features like on-device encryption at rest and the ability to self-host. You can see our Privacy Policy for more information.