Potential of the personal health record for empowering the consumer and impacting the quality of care

A key issue that is not frequently part of the debate on EHRs/PHRs is their potential role in consumer empowerment and quality improvement. When linked to appropriate web platforms, EHRs that contain high quality, comparable information can drive PHRs that transform information on health status and care into useful facts and recommended actions to promote personal health management by consumers. Such EHR/PHR platforms could also provide the basis for consumer assessment of care quality in which actual interventions are compared against best practices. Yet, we are currently a very long way from realizing this vision. These comments will outline the vision and discuss practical steps that can be taken to begin turning the vision into a reality.

This presentation will focus on the impact of the electronic health data acquisition and management on empowerment and quality measurement issues as we now do it, compared to the theoretical alternative – the “inverted pyramid”.