> I had to laugh out loud...
> ... hospital medical records 
> in the US were never created to be 
> searchable or to create aggregated 
> medical record data for analysis.

Perhaps your state does not have one yet, but I was a subcontractor on a
project in NC back in the 2002-2005 timeframe to do 
exactly that, and be "searchable" on a very broad and flexible basis, under
what was designed to be near "real time".

This was in the less-than technologically cutting-edge state of NC.
It resulted in "NCEDD" the North Carolina Emergency Department Database, now
called "NC-Detect".

As there were already several thick standards documents for "statewide
emergency department data collection" that had been negotiated before we
started, it was clear that several other states had already implemented such
statewide systems, and had negotiated pretty decent standards.  

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