PHR: The What and the Why
Though the PHR is not a replacement of any healthcare provider’s legal record, it has the potential to be more comprehensive than traditional records, and has the benefit of being accessible by the patient at all times. A PHR may contain health information including the following
● Patient and family members’ contact information
● A list of providers involved in the patient’s care
● Diagnosis list
● Medications list
● Allergy list
● Immunization records
● Lab and test results
● Family medical history
A patient’s PHR can be crucial to providing proper healthcare in urgent situations. For example, when a patient encounters an emergency while traveling, and does not have access to their institution’s records, the PHR, being mobile in nature, provides immediate access to information that may be vital for treating the patient. A PHR may also be used to track symptoms and test results for chronic diseases or pandemic diseases such as COVID-19. Having information from multiple healthcare providers also increases the possibility of comprehensive and coordinated treatment programs. On the industry side, studies have shown that involving the patient in their own healthcare has long-term cost-saving benefits for both the patient, and for the health provider.
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.
