Expert Teams to Design New Solutions for Personal Health Records to Help Consumers Manage Their Health

Expert Teams to Design New Solutions for Personal Health Records to Help Consumers Manage Their Health: "The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today kicked off a landmark program to design and test bold ideas for how consumers can use information technology to better manage their health and navigate the health care system.

Project HealthDesign: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Records, a $4.4 million initiative, has selected nine multidisciplinary teams that will build new tools that advance the field of personal health record (PHR) systems. The teams were chosen from a pool of more than 165 applicants and each has been selected to receive an 18-month, $300,000 grant.


"It's not just the wider use of personal health records or online access to the data they store that is so revolutionary," said Stephen Downs, S.M., RWJF senior program officer and deputy director of the Health Group. "Project HealthDesign is challenging the PHR field to focus on the potential for patients, providers and caregivers to use this information to improve their health. The design of the systems over which this information flows is critical, and that is why we're excited to support the efforts of these technology pioneers to develop the next generation of PHR systems."

With so many clever people working on PHRs, I think we are going to see some very interesting developments in this field !