I saw an e-mail that was sent out by the Office Of the (US) National Co-Ordinator for Health IT a day or so ago.
Here is a link where you can subscribe to the weekly e-mail.
http://www.healthit.gov/ (at the top of the menu)
In that e-mail - at the bottom there was a discussion of the PHRs that are available.
Maintain Your Medical Record
How can eHealth tools help me manage my personal medical and health records?
Keeping track of medical records can difficult if your health information is in multiple places or in a format (such as paper) that is difficult to use. This challenge gets harder when working with several doctors to address several health concerns. Your doctor and other health care providers maintain their own medical records about you. But many patients see advantages in also maintaining their own personal health records to record past appointments, test results, prescriptions, and more. Today, many apps and online services exist to make the job of organizing this information easier. And in some cases, these tools also help patients and family caregivers share information among doctors and other family members so everyone is on the same page.
A personal health record (PHR) is similar to the electronic health record (EHR) that your doctor might keep, except that you to store your most important health information and control who has access to it. Most PHRs require you to add your own information by scanning documents or typing in information. Many PHRs give you the option of adding information you think is relevant but that your doctor may not have, like information about your over-the-counter medications, exercise habits or sleep schedule. For the most part, these PHRs don’t connect to an employer, health system, or insurer. These systems are typically web based, and available for free or for a small subscription fee.
Lots more here:
Key to me was the section at the bottom of the page:
Personal Health Records and eHealth Hubs
A free PHR system that integrates with multiple web sites and personal health devices.
A free standalone PHR system with some options for sharing information with doctors and others.
A free standalone PHR system with some options for sharing information with doctors and others.
eHealth Hubs
Unlike full-fledged PHRs, these sites are focused more on health tracking tools, but include some PHR features such as record upload and sharing tools.
A personal health hub including multiple health trackers and some app/device integration. Includes some medication management and other PHR functions.
A personal health hub with multiple health trackers, a strong focus on medication management, and some capacity to record medical history.
PHR and Medical Record Information for Consumers
Consumer Guides to PHRs
A site specifically about PHRs, including an extensive guide to the systems available today. Sponsored by the American Health Information Management Association.
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The bottom line of all this to me is to make it clear that whatever MMRGlobal might claim to own in the way of patents there is not a great deal of evidence that the US Government, Microsoft and so on have either heard of or care at all regarding such claims.
It seems highly unlikely the MS, Google (previously) and the others listed did not firstly check and secondly noticed and decided they were free to proceed.
I think all this has been an amusing distraction and that the best thing DoHA / NEHTA can do is advise MMRGlobal that they believe their claims are simply nonsense and are unenforceable given the number of years PHRs have been around and in use.
Wikipedia makes the age of the concept and implementations clear!
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“The term “personal health record” is not new. The earliest mention of the term was in an article indexed by PubMed dated June 1978,[2] and even earlier in 1956 reference is made to a personal health log.[3] However, most scientific articles written about PHRs have been published since 2000.
The term "PHR" has been applied to both paper-based and computerized systems; current usage usually implies an electronic application used to collect and store health data. In recent years, several formal definitions of the term have been proposed by various organizations.[4][5][6]”
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- "Recordkeeping systems: personal health records". J Am Med Rec Assoc. 55 (12): 42. Dec 1984. PMID 10310901.
- "Concepts of the Health Vault". 1999 Paper by Tom Munnecke describing an architecture for the Personal Health Record
- "[Personal medical records and identification card, synchronized information systems] [Personal medical records and identification card, synchronized information systems]" (in French). Rev Infirm. (106): 45–6. Dec 2004. PMID 15672518.
- Swain, M; Lawn, B (Apr 2005). "Information prescriptions (Ix): bringing internet-based health content into the treatment process; patients to your site". Internet Healthc Strateg. 7 (4): 4–8. doi:10.1016/0148-9062(76)91830-1. PMID 15929640.
- "Report on attitudes about personal health records". Internet Healthc Strateg. 6 (9): 10–1. Sep 2004. PMID 15526437.
Full article here:
Back to sleep now!
David.
