Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about Personal Health Records (PHRs).  There’s been recent interest in PHRs and many big names getting into the PHR game:  Microsoft with HealthVault, Google, Revolution Health.

Like I’ve posted before think of PHRs like a bank. To be truly valuable a PHR needs to use the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) as a reference.  Can the big names do this?

The ideal PHR is editable by the patient.  The patient would be able to add new items or items from their EMR that they can reference.  They are able to share or not share items in the records that they feel is appropriate.  The items in the patient’s PHR are linked to a content library so that they patient can look up more information about their conditions or find drug interactions that may have been missed.  If a patient changes health networks or hospital organizations that record is able to be copied to another organization’s PHR.

I believe patients will use the one attached to their health network and then if they move the record needs to be portable to another organization.  Maybe this is the role of the big names?