Caution with Personal Health Record

Although,there are myriad number of vendors selling personal health record products,you should always undertake due diligence when choosing the right vendor.Many of them sell USB flash drive based version of Personal health record product,which are a good short term solution,mainly if you are traveling.But,on the long term online based record offer better option.

Some of the notable features to be looked when choosing a vendor are:

1. Is it a Stable company-if it sells an online version of Personal health record product.You do not want to end up loosing all your vital health records if the company ends belly up.
2. Does it have an secure server,if so where is the data hosted.Many of the companies claim to have secure servers,but the data will be hosted at an shared server in some remote unknown country.
3. What is the privacy policy regarding your health data-is it mined with personal identifying information or in general.Many of the companies sell your personal health data.it is one of the ways of making money or revenue generation.But,if the data is de-personalized like they do research meta analysis,then it is fine.but if there are some personal identifying trails then it can lead to problems.
4. Does the company perform audit trails of data entry and retrieval-This is extremely important to know who enters and exists the database server.

These are some of the basic features that you should look at a personal health vendor,before you make a decision of buying a personal health record product.