Using a secure portable reference to medical information, stored on a portable storage medium, various embodiments allow a patient to give to their doctor an easy-to-use access key that will enable access to desired medical information stored on a computer network. The secure portable reference provides greater transportability of medical records to a patient or medical data repository including a doctor's office, clinic, or hospital, while maintaining data security to satisfy medical data privacy regulations and expectations. Some described embodiments use encrypted information inside the secure portable reference to hide, for example, who is allowed access to the stored medical information, and the network location of the stored information. Some embodiments use a secret PIN to authenticate the user attempting access to the referenced medical information. The secure portable reference contains information on network resources used to enable download access to medical information, including medical records and medical images.