Your family's medical records in one place

Why keep them in one place

A family's medical reports come from many places: the local lab, the hospital, a private specialist, an emergency room on holiday. Each hands them over in its own way, on paper, by email or through a portal. The result is usually a folder with some pages and a phone with others.

Having them all together helps most at three moments: at the appointment, when the doctor asks for the latest test or the one from a year ago; when you change doctor or pediatrician; when something happens away from home and you need a report right away. MedlinePlus, the information service of the US National Library of Medicine, suggests keeping your own health record precisely because you may have charts at several doctors' offices and hospitals, and lists the dates and results of tests among the first things to collect.

At home: one folder per person

1. One folder for each family member, adults included.
2. Inside, reports in date order, most recent first. The date to go by is the collection or exam date, not the day you picked it up.
3. Keep each report whole, with every page and the signature: a page separated from the rest loses its context.
4. Keep prescriptions, referrals and receipts separate: they are different documents, and mixing them makes reports harder to find.
5. A sheet at the front of the folder listing each test, its date and where it was done works as an index to bring to appointments.

If there are many documents, sort each person's folder by type as well: lab results, imaging such as ultrasounds and X-rays, specialist visits, emergency room visits, discharge summaries, vaccinations. Using the same groups every time is what makes a document quick to find.

Getting copies of your child's records

In the United States, the HIPAA Privacy Rule gives you the right to see and get a copy of your health record, and health plans and most providers, labs included, must follow it. HealthIT.gov, the federal site on health information technology, explains how in its guide Get It, Check It, Use It, written also for caregivers acting as a health care proxy for a minor child.

In England, a GP surgery can set up family and carer access, also called proxy access, so that a parent can act for a child under 16: order repeat prescriptions, book appointments and, depending on what the surgery allows, view test results or vaccinations. You ask the surgery, which may call it proxy access and ask you to fill in a form; some surgeries are trialling an option to apply in the NHS App. Before setting it up, the surgery may ask for ID and proof of parental responsibility, and will check with anyone else who shares that responsibility.

Access changes as children grow. According to the NHS, children aged 11 and over can begin to make their own decisions about their healthcare, and most surgeries have an automatic cut-off between 11 and 14 to protect an older child's confidentiality. Family and carer access usually ends when the child turns 16, and can be restored if the young person wants or needs it.

On your phone: every report, paper ones too

Portals keep the documents that come from their own systems. But not everything you have at home goes through them: paper reports from a few years ago, for example, or a test done abroad. An archive on your phone can hold them all, as long as each document has a date, a person and a name you can find again.

• Photograph or scan paper reports, one page per image, in good light and with the whole page in the frame.
• Save the PDFs from portals as soon as results are ready, so you have them even if you change provider.
• Give each file a name that starts with the date, for example “2026-10-12 CBC Sophie”: that way alphabetical order becomes date order.
• Keep a second copy off your phone, in your cloud storage or on a computer.

Before the appointment: what to have at hand

An organized archive pays off most when you are at the doctor's. MedlinePlus suggests keeping, next to the dates and results of tests, a list of medicines and supplements with their dosages and how long they have been taken, and any history of illnesses in the family. Before a visit, it helps to have ready:

• the latest report of each test the doctor might ask about, with its collection date;
• earlier reports of the same test, if any, for comparison;
• discharge summaries and specialist reports from recent months;
• the questions you want to ask, written down so you do not forget them.

If the doctor asks you to send a document, ask which format they prefer: a PDF with just the pages, a photo or a printout.

With Pediary: the whole family's lab tests and reports

Pediary is a free app for iPhone and Android, with no Pediary account and no ads, that keeps lab tests and medical reports for children and adults, reads the pages of Italian and English reports on the phone, and shows how values change over time.

Each family profile, child or adult, has its own diary of lab tests and medical reports. A lab test is added with “Scan pages”, “Choose photos”, “Import PDF” or “Enter manually”; a medical report with a scan, photos or a PDF. Reports are sorted by category, such as “Ultrasounds and X-rays”, “Specialist visit”, “Emergency room” or “Discharge summary”, and search finds words even inside the text read from the pages.

Lab tests and reports can be linked to visits, in the “Linked documents” section, so at the next appointment you open them with one tap. With “Share PDF” you send your doctor only the pages of the document. With sync, end-to-end encrypted, the other parent sees them on their phone too, with Pediary 3.3.0 or later.

What Pediary does not do:

• It is not connected to hospital or lab portals: you download the PDF yourself and add it with “Import PDF”.
• It imports PDF files of up to 10 pages. Password-protected PDFs do not open: save a copy without the password first.
• Automatic reading works for reports in Italian and English; for others the pages stay attached and you type the details yourself.

Sources

Every point in this guide comes from these sources, consulted in October 2026.

1. MedlinePlus, Personal Health Records
2. HealthIT.gov (US Department of Health and Human Services), Get It, Check It, Use It: the guide to getting and using your health records (updated January 20, 2026)
3. NHS, How to get family and carer access for children under 16 (reviewed July 2, 2026)

Download Pediary for free

The health diary for you and your family, with lab tests and medical reports from version 3.3.0.