What people want is something like this

Not have a big chance of getting a medication that wont help or will give them inconvenient side effects

Not have to worry that someone will advise them and neither will have time to figure out that they are likely to have an allergic reaction to something

Not have to repeat tests that have risks

Not have to waste time filling out the same information every time they do something different in healthcare

Be able to get an answer to a personal question from someone that they trust, know, or can rely on

Not waste time getting to an answer

Have doctors and nurses spend the right amount of time with them when needed

Communicate with the healthcare industry in a way that they want, when and how they want. just like other industries

Whether keeping a personal health record is a primary goal or a “default” objective because there is no more realistic way to achieve all this, and whether their keeping personal records in the absence of the industry believing that a PHR is the PRIMARY source of core information, not an offshoot, is a serious question to ask if we are to understand why this “no brainer” is not a more ubiquitous reality. But there is not much question that figuring out how to achieve this in a pragmatic, non intrusive, non-technology centric model is a laudable objective. I have always believed that we should be thinking of this as a technology facilitated “service”, not a thing in itself. And if we dont start getting the message across that this is something an individual can expect to “Do work on” and “Pay for the sanity of having” we wont get there

I have met the people from VitalKey, for example, and that is a centralized supported workflow process that acknowledges the idea of a PHR is a dynamic ongoing process rather than a “thing” There are other models, and technologies. Alot of the industry, as with the EMR industry is still a population based research project in my view!

More later, just some thoughts