Perceptions on Personal Health Record and Their Maintenance for Your Better Health

Most of the people do not carry their medical records when they leave home. They do not realise that in an emergency, which no one can predict, these medical records can make a big difference. In fact, they could save a life. Previous medications, history of drug allergy, and other significant medical or surgical history can help a physician to optimise the treatment. The National Health Council is recommended to keep a personal health record and take it with you to your doctor. It is one thing to document your medical information it’s another to know when and how to use it.

The main components of a good personal health record are:

•         Your name, date of birth, blood type and emergency contact

•         Date of the last physical

•         The dates and results of tests and screenings

•         The main diseases and surgeries, dates

•         A list of drugs, dosages and how long you took them

•         Any allergies

•         Any chronic illness

•         A history of family illnesses

Paper-based Personal health records have been used since the beginning of modern health care services. These have several drawbacks in that it is not possible to quickly access it during an emergency, the difficulties in the sharing of these documents, security and vulnerable to physical destruction, as illustrated in the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans in 2005. These recordings are also difficult to carry around for the individual while migrating to another medical centre or health care provider.

Although there are several methods to record your own personal health, Portable digital Personal Health Record storage media are popular because they offer the advantage to individuals, to enable them to keep their health information into their own computer's hard drive or other storage devices. In addition, these could be made easily accessible to any health care provider by the person that controls the data.

The electronic management of personal health records has been developed over the past two decades by various electronic medical software vendors. The rapid growth of this sector has been noticed during the dot-com bubble era. Today, with the growth of Web 2.0 on the internet, there is a renewed interest in personal health records in electronic form

Many still have confusion about health personnel Record (PHR) and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) .PHRs are different. EMR or electronic medical records are developed in hospitals and medical centres, these legal medical records are created and stored in the health sector and patients have no control over these records. They contain longitudinal medical information of any patient for a period of time. A fully functioning EMR is described as one that includes a clinical data repository, controlled medical vocabulary, computerized provider order entry, clinical documentation or charting, pharmacy management, electronic medication administration records, the main auxiliary systems ( for example, laboratory, diagnostic imaging, cardiology, and so on.) and image archiving and communication systems (PACS).

However, PHRs or personal medical records are created by individuals and patients can have full control over these records. These may contain in addition to medical illness information, health related information. The models are shrink wrapped, unlike EMRs.They could also include the patient's complete demographic data with essential health insurance details. Also, they could also include records of disease in a period of time.

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