The growing importance of the participation of individuals in their own care and wellness activities is the impetus behind the vision for personal health records. By enabling and encouraging individuals to become more engaged in their health and care, and by providing the means to document, track and evaluate their health conditions, a PHR can lead to more informed health care decisions, improved personal health status, and ultimately, reduced cost and improved quality of health care.
The current and largely rudimentary manifestations of what some call PHRs in electronic form begin to address personal health management objectives by providing some information on health care services and allowing individuals to enter information. Yet, PHRs have the potential to be a robust, better-assembled and more organized source of both clinical and wellness information for an improved level of clinical, health and wellness decisions. The anticipated result is a well-rounded, complete picture of an individual’s health that extends beyond the care provided by the delivery system. Given the longitudinal nature of a PHR, the time period for this information could conceivably be as long as “cradle to grave.”
Though a portion of the information in a PHR may originate from health care providers, health insurers or third party administrators, the control of information transfers to the individual when it becomes part of the PHR. By contrast, current internet-based portals of information on an individual that are hosted and maintained by a provider or payer organization, without transferring access and control and use of the information to the individual, are not considered PHRs based on this definition.
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