The bar for what a medical records app should do has risen sharply. In 2026, patients expect more than a folder of scanned PDFs — they want to understand their results, share them securely with a tap and have everything in one place regardless of which clinic, lab or radiology center issued it.
We're obviously not a neutral observer here, but the features that actually matter when managing your health records are worth laying out honestly. Here's what separates a genuinely great app from one that just stores files.
Verification that travels with the document
The most overlooked problem in digital health records isn't storage — it's trust. A PDF on your phone could have been altered by anyone. A document that carries a tamper-proof QR code, verifiable by any clinic or pharmacy in seconds, is a fundamentally different thing.
Every document issued through Looms — prescriptions, lab results, radiology reports, sick-leave notes — embeds a QR code that links to a cryptographic proof of authenticity. A pharmacist, employer or specialist can scan it and know instantly whether it's genuine, who issued it and when. No phone calls. No back-and-forth with the original clinic. For more on how verification works in practice, read what a verified medical document actually proves.
AI that explains results in plain language
A lab result that says 'serum ferritin 9 µg/L (reference 12–150)' tells most people nothing useful. Looms' AI health assistant reads the result in the context of your full history and explains it: what the value means, why it matters alongside your other markers and what questions are worth raising at your next appointment.
This isn't generic health information. The assistant knows your conditions, your medications and your trends over time. It's the difference between a search engine and a conversation with someone who has actually read your file.
A single timeline across every provider
Most people's health records are scattered across a dozen patient portals, email inboxes and physical folders. In 2026, the best medical records apps don't just store what you upload — they receive documents directly from the clinics and labs that issue them.
When a lab publishes your blood panel to your Looms account, it appears in your timeline the moment it's ready. When a radiology center issues an imaging report, it lands directly in your record alongside the images. You see your full health story in chronological order, from every source, in one place.
Family care without separate accounts
One of the most common pain points we hear is parents managing health records for children, elderly parents or partners — each requiring a separate login, a separate app and a separate mental model. Looms lets you manage health profiles for family members and dependents from a single account, with the same tools and the same AI understanding you use for your own records.
Built for the whole care journey, not just storage
The apps that fell behind in 2026 are the ones that treated medical records as an archiving problem. Looms treats them as the foundation for everything: booking appointments with connected clinics, tracking medications and getting refill reminders, monitoring trends in your lab results over time, joining telehealth visits and keeping the notes afterward.
Your health record isn't a file cabinet. It's the continuous story of how you're doing — and the right app should help you understand and act on that story, not just preserve it.
Security that doesn't require trust in a third party
Health data is the most sensitive personal data there is. We built Looms on the principle that you should be in control of what gets shared, with whom and for how long. Every share you create is time-limited by default and revocable at any point. Documents shared with a provider don't give them open access to your full history — only what you've chosen to share.
That's not a feature list — it's a philosophy. And in 2026, it's the standard every serious medical records app should be held to.