Although the term personal health record or commonly known as PHR has been around for many decades,it has reached widespread notice only in the past couple of years.With the burgeoning growth of vendors of PHR product during the dot-com bubble phase had resulted in numerous PHR products flooding the market.
This added confusion about what does PHR mean?
Is it collection of only your health records or also other personal information like financial and legal information.Also how should it be stored?Paper based format in a book or folder or electronically using word processor software and storing it in your desktop or home computer hard drive or portable method using CD or USB drive.
Who should enter the data?Patients themselves or physicians or any other third party sources.
The growth of PHR in the last decade had also resulted in increased research and developmental funding towards PHR.But,the confusion around the term still exists.Many prominent non-profit organisations like Markle foundation had tried to define PHR.but it is not an consensus’s decision.These have resulted in added confusion around the term.
The National Alliance for Health Information Technology has recently announced an initiative to define some basic health information technology terms.This will hopefully decrease the confusion among consumers about what exactly is PHR?
Filed under: Personal Health Records | Tagged: Consumer health record, Definition, health records, Personal Health Record, PHR, PHR terms
[...] Here is an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe National Alliance for Health Information Technology has recently announced an initiative to define some basic health information technology terms.This will hopefully decrease the confusion among consumers about what exactly is PHR? [...]
HL7 has been working for two years on defining a functional model of a PHR-System. It is currently finishing a 1 month world wide public ballot with comments which will be reconciled in the next two months. Assuming it passes it will then join the EHR-S functional model standard. The following reference is from the HL7 web site. This is a dynamic process but we are coming to terms about what functions need to be present to qualify as a PHR.
http://www.hl7.org/documentcenter/public/pressreleases/HL7_PRESS_20071017.pdf