Location: southern california
I would love to be able to share my PHR with more of my physicians, so EHR adoption is critical. As mentioned above, PHRs like mine (I use HealthVault) do require a fair amount of dedication from the patient. The PHR is more valuable if it has all of the important information (test results, visit notes, etc) included. I hope to see more doctors shifting to electronic health records. I believe it will make a big difference in healthcare overall.
2009-07-14 19:37:57
Name: Robert Rowley
Location: San Francisco, CA
PHRs are going through considerable evolution. Remember the early PHR attempts (e.g. WebMD) that were simply empty shells reliant on enthusiastic patients to fill out? More recently, PHRs offerings have been more connected – Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health have created PHRs that try to collect data from various sources and populate the record (garbage included). It still requires a fair amount of work on the part of enthusiastic patients to accomplish this. The next generation of PHRs are more like interconnected “patient portals” into a clinician’s EHR – mainly a feature of web-based EHRs that can extend their offering to patients. These kinds of fully-connected PHRs, filled directly with what is in the EHR without having to “actively load” anything, offers the possibility of secure messaging between the patient and the clinician, so that data can be validated and meaningful interaction can take place. I have been working with Practice Fusion (http://www.practicefusion.com), which is a free web-based EHR that is in the process of building such a PHR offering and realizing the vision described in this article.
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Location: southern california
I would love to be able to share my PHR with more of my physicians, so EHR adoption is critical. As mentioned above, PHRs like mine (I use HealthVault) do require a fair amount of dedication from the patient. The PHR is more valuable if it has all of the important information (test results, visit notes, etc) included. I hope to see more doctors shifting to electronic health records. I believe it will make a big difference in healthcare overall.
Location: San Francisco, CA
PHRs are going through considerable evolution. Remember the early PHR attempts (e.g. WebMD) that were simply empty shells reliant on enthusiastic patients to fill out? More recently, PHRs offerings have been more connected – Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health have created PHRs that try to collect data from various sources and populate the record (garbage included). It still requires a fair amount of work on the part of enthusiastic patients to accomplish this. The next generation of PHRs are more like interconnected “patient portals” into a clinician’s EHR – mainly a feature of web-based EHRs that can extend their offering to patients. These kinds of fully-connected PHRs, filled directly with what is in the EHR without having to “actively load” anything, offers the possibility of secure messaging between the patient and the clinician, so that data can be validated and meaningful interaction can take place. I have been working with Practice Fusion (http://www.practicefusion.com), which is a free web-based EHR that is in the process of building such a PHR offering and realizing the vision described in this article.