Today the personal health record is at the infancy stage. In most applications, the user is asked to enter data about their demographics, conditions, medications, etc. either by selecting items from lists or by typing the information into text boxes. This data entry process reminds me of older versions of the personal finance programs in which there was no ability to download information from financial institutions. I tried it for awhile and it quickly became tedious to enter data in my checkbook and on the computer. I think the same thing will happen with these personal health records and I believe that this is part of the reason that the adoption rate/usage of personal health records is low today.

I believe that the optimal path to adding personal health data to a profile is that the user will find a page in a health content library and link it to their profile.

In a Pew Internet Health Resources report, they found that 80% of adult Internet users have searched for health information online. Users will engage in information seeking behavior before adding data to their profile. Instead of capturing the data later, this concept will allow the user to associate the data to their profile at the moment they are reading about it. Any additional data specific to the user can also be added. In addition, their profile will be linked to the health content they found originally. The application should minimize the amount of data that the user needs to enter.

In addition the personal record should be viewed as an extension of the user’s existing health profile. The application should use data the user already entered in registering on a site and in addition should use data from the personal health record to fill in that information where ever else it is required on the site so that the user does not need to re-enter data that they have already entered once. Also, the user should be able to print that data to present it to the physician.

To see a working example of these characteristics in a personal health record, visit http://www.eCommunity.com/mycommunity/phr/. The Greystone consumer health content library along with a medication guide is being used to provide the source material for the user. Users can associate pages within each of these libraries to their profile and enter any additional information they wish. Our goal is to create a site that non-members can use to get their health information but members can customize the entire site by associating health information to their profile.

The ultimate goal for a personal health record should be to provide a location where the user is able to pull data out of their electronic medical record and add it to their profile. In addition, that user is able to add data to their profile that is visible by their healthcare providers. I don’t think that this will happen in the near future but I believe that is the direction that the consumerism movement is heading with regards to personal health information.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 6:19 am and is filed under Healthcare, Michael Fisher, Web Design, usability, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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