"You can live forever through your digital records and through your online footprint, " says Ms Downey.
Digital records are extremely fragile and can easily be lost, deleted, corrupted or altered.
Yet America's army and the Afghan government have collected digital records of more than 2.5m of them.
In fact, more than ever, people understand that making digital records work is critical to fixing health care.
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The profession has already worked internationally to develop standards, laws, practices and technologies needed to manage digital records.
Digital records will only remain accurate and authentic if they are managed professionally.
He stressed that the results had implications beyond social media to all digital records - from browser histories to search queries.
After a few years, the digital records are transferred to the National Archives where they are held securely for historical use.
Equally serious, there is a high risk that on a day-to-day basis, digital records will not survive unless control systems are applied.
Government requirements for digital records systems ensure that records are properly identified and controlled, and hardware and software vendors must comply with these requirements.
While paper records are often looted and burned during wars, many original documents do survive - this may not be the case with digital records.
If the digital records of government policies, actions and transactions are to remain available, authentic and usable over time, international professional standards must be applied.
Already, some digital records are inaccessible, such as older medical records.
What about the inevitable shift to digital records, you say?
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The participants adopted a series of recommendations to ensure the durability and reliability of digital records, whose importance has grown in keeping with the growth of digitally generated information.
Drchrono provides an iPad-based digital health records system that doctors can use to manage their records and interact with patients.
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Earlier this year, California instituted the "reader privacy act, " which makes it more difficult for law-enforcement groups to gain access to consumers' digital reading records.
The challenges will grow more critical as the volume of records in digital format increases.
Digital hospitals, computerized records--they are fun to talk about but do more to add to the cost of medicine.
Launched in 2002, it was meant to revolutionise the way technology was used in the health service by paving the way for electronic records, digital scanning and integrated IT systems across hospitals and community care.
Even worse, it means that American libraries cannot legally copy records made before 1972 to digital formats for the purpose of preservation not unless those records have already deteriorated to the point where they may soon become unplayable.
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In the digital age, when many records are made and maintained in electronic form, we have extraordinary opportunities to improve records management.
So, when he heard Dave deBronkart, aka e-Patient Dave, at a TED talk in April, it spurred him to take control of his health, by gathering his far-flung medical records into one digital file.
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The great challenge is to avoid digital amnesia, to ensure that records and data created today will also be accessible to humanity in the future.
Digital Health and Fitness Goes Consumer : The digital health market - medical records, mobile apps, telehealth, fitness monitors - is growing at about 40% a year.
According to Ted Cohen , EMI Records senior vice president of digital development and distribution, it's all about the money.
This data springs from such diverse sources as weather, social media posts, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records and cell phone GPS signals, to name a few.
Others insisted that he immediately take down his digital edition, which would erase all records of the thousands of five-star reviews the book had accumulated, forcing him to start from scratch.
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