Your health record is available as data, not just a PDF

2026 Oct 03 ( 1 minute )

I like to take care of my health pro-actively and since I also love playing with data, I was looking at my patient portal test results and a way to retrieve them directly.

I didn’t know that since the 2021 Cures Act rules, a US provider has to give you electronic access to your own health record, at no cost, and “electronic access” is not a PDF.

What the portal actually hands you is a C-CDA XML: every lab value with its unit, its reference range and its LOINC code, plus vitals, medications, immunizations and encounters.

It is buried, of course. Tasks and Tools, then the record download. Two clicks I had never made, after years of using the portal.

Why it matters: a PDF is a picture of your data. A C-CDA is the data. And it is one standard, everywhere: the same parser reads the file from your clinic and from the hospital down the road.

You cannot grep a PDF. So go play with your health data :)!