PHR (Personal Health Record): Debate Background

The concept of a PHR was first discussed over half a century ago. Despite this fact, and the aforementioned benefits, the PHR does not yet enjoy widespread implementation. Some of the major problems currently faced by PHR include lack of infrastructure, and challenges to adoption due to lack of incentivization, difficulty of use and unsuccessful marketing.

Another key problem concerns ensuring consistency of data. At the core of the concept of the PHR and the key to its effectiveness is the idea that the PHR is both cumulative, meaning it contains all data relevant to a patient’s health from a variety of sources, and up to date. The usefulness of a PHR is drastically curbed when, for instance, a patient’s data is fragmented across multiple records, or when different records contain conflicting information.

Thus, an effectively implemented PHR would require that data is verifiable and is consistent, such that the data being accessed by one’s healthcare provider at home is the same being accessed anywhere else in the world. In short, the PHR is a promising solution that must also be updated to the standards of the current day.

This section of the paper has highlighted some of the existing problems in healthcare today and has introduced the PHR its potential benefits and challenges. The following sections of this paper will focus on the full scope of the holistic solution which BioPassport Coin plans to implement