Personal Health Records: Personal Control of Health Data and Patient-Provider Communications, 2nd in a 3-part Series
Overall Purpose:
This national Web conference, sponsored by the AHRQ National Resource Center for Health IT and moderated by Teresa Zayas-Caban of AHRQ, was the second in a three-part series on Personal Health Records (PHRs). The presenters, Kenneth Mandl of Children's Hospital in Boston and Jonathan Wald of Partners HealthCare, talked about Children's Hospital Informatics Program's (CHIP) experience designing and implementing Indivo. Indivo is a personally controlled health record with the ability to integrate information from numerous and diverse healthcare databases. With an emphasis on strict patient control, it allows patients to maintain electronic copies of their records in a storage site of their choosing. CHIP is now collaborating with Dossia to adapt Indivo for its company employees and dependents. Also discussed were Partners HealthCare's patient portal, Patient Gateway, and how it has fostered patient-provider communication and improved patient access to personalized information. Patient Gateway is linked to patients' electronic health record, giving providers and patients the opportunity to share and discuss a patient's health care needs and concerns. The presenters described the challenges they have encountered while implementing their PHRs, as well as the dialogue that has resulted between patients and healthcare providers.