Pioneering Ideas: Tomorrow's New Vital Signs, PHR-delivered

Pioneering Ideas: Tomorrow's New Vital Signs, PHR-delivered: "Project HealthDesign has released a new e-primer that explores the importance of observations of daily living (ODL) in moving toward next-generation personal health records and health management. PHRs enable consumers and providers to incorporate routine health observations that go well beyond what data are captured at clinical visits. Some are more obvious than others – blood glucose readings for diabetics, did I take the right pills at the right time today – but others may play an equally important role in pursuing health goals and managing chronic health conditions.

Things like: Does my chronic pain spike when the temperature dips below a certain threshold? What effects might a particularly stressful month, with long hours at work and marginal sleep, have on my eating and activity behaviors, and hence my diabetes? Can the fact that a 17-year-old with a chronic illness is regularly self-reporting his or her mood to be bad or sad play a role in the self-management of his or her disease? And, if today’s pollen counts are really high, can my PHR device send me an alert in the morning to remember my inhaler, and then delete that point-in-time data capture because it may not be useful if conditions change tomorrow?"

This is information which only an electronic PHR will allow patients and doctors to capture and analyse.
If you have a chronic illness, then you should keep your own PHR. Don't wait for your doctor to suggest this . Your PHR will help you - and also help him to help you !