Here is my view published in BMJ as a response to article by Claudia Pagliari, Don Detmer, and Peter Singleton on Potential of electronic personal health records published BMJ 2007; 335: 330-333

Pagliari, Detmer and Singleton’s article on the potential of electronic personal health records (EHRs) is timely but this also raises some fundamental questions.First where are the data stored ? and then who actually controls these data? Patients who create and finally control their health data through personal health records either in online or off line method can restrict the viewing of their records to their own physicians and if they have any malicious data,they can erase it completely.Despite the presence of audit trailing, it is not yet a fool proof method to keep track of all changes to the health data.Moreover,physicians who access these records may be overwhelmed by presence of extensive record of personal health data by some patients.To isolate the good,bad and not useful data may be a tedious task for physicians and health care professionals in future.Next question is where are the data stored,is it in a secure server and if so for how long will the data be stored-life time of a patient or beyond?Can these data be used for research purpose or statistical analysis?

Despite these concerns,personal health record have an useful role to play in health care management.Adopting technologies in health care will significantly reduce the cost and improve the effectiveness of health care delivery.Over prescription of medications,duplication of tests and lack of sharing of medical information among health care service providers has resulted in increased cost of health care in the current era.To improve the effectiveness of economic resources in area of health care, there is a need for fundamental changes in health care industry,although these changes cannot be done dramatically over the period of couple of years,but could be accomplished in the future.

Electronic Personal Health Record may be the first step towards enabling change in health care industry.

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