Personally Controlled Health Records: Tectonic Shifts in the Health Information Economy

Personally controlled health records are emerging as an important tool for managing health data in both clinical and research settings.  These electronic records give patients control over who has access to their health information and make it easier for patients to compile health information from multiple institutions.  Three commercial systems have been created by Google, Microsoft, and a consortium of companies including Walmart and AT&T.

A personally controlled health record is a virtual medical home.  A patient has the ability to annotate but not delete information, to subscribe to hospitals at which he or she has received care, to share information with others, and to export his or her health information in a convenient form.  These health records make it easier for medical institutions to share information.  A central server compiles information so that no one has to manually enter information into multiple institutional databases.

Personally controlled health records make it easier for researchers to gather large data sets.  A recent study within the Partners Healthcare system, for example, revealed a significant increase in the number of myocardial infarctions after the introduction of the COX-2 inhibitor Vioxx in 1999.  This spike was not detected initially because it was difficult to gather the appropriate data set without the ease of electronically accessing personally controlled medical records.

---

Post a Comment

Wikipedia

Start or edit an Electronic Health Record encyclopedia article on Wikipedia.

You can link to this page from the article using the following URL:

http://www.cimit.org/forum/forum-csi-1.20.09.Mandl.html

Learn more about Wikipedia.