Designing better PHRs

Designing better PHRs
1. Using PHRs for medical record keeping is only the tip of the iceberg.
As the Project HealthDesign teams design and test their prototypes, they are learning that using PHRs to record observations of daily living – such as sleep, diet, mood, medications taken, etc. — may provide helpful clues to patients and doctors about how to better manage their care.
2. The need to make day-to-day observations about mood, pain, etc. is consistent across all patient groups and lends itself to common approaches to record, store and analyze this data
As PHRs are further developed, technology designers could create personal health applications that respond to trends in daily information to empower patients to make minor lifestyle and health adjustments, thereby improving how they feel.
3. Successful PHRs and their applications need to mesh with the tools that consumers rely on in their everyday routines. For example, patients aren’t likely to use a separate calendar that highlights timing for breast cancer treatments; they want information about their breast cancer treatments to sync with the electronic calendar they already use to organize the rest of their lives.