Dr. Ira Denton serves as the company's chief medical officer. In an effort to explain PHR in some detail to its visitors, WellnessWeb's Executive Editor, Lenore Howe, interviewed Dr. Denton on September 29, 2000. In addition, over the past ten years, I've developed an understanding of how electronic patient records worked, and together, those experiences showed me that patients increasingly want to be involved in their personal care. Doctors know that informed patients have better outcomes. Today's Internet environment, with its wealth of information resources and capabilities for their exchange, offers exciting opportunities to patients, but more importantly, to active consumers that are integrating health and wellness programs into daily life.
Doctors know that informed patients have better outcomes.
Patients didn't actually request it but they did come into my office with clever, home-made records of their past history that included their medications, their allergies and other records that were important to keep. It was really quite straightforward, then, for the product to evolve from the professional record into a very powerful personal health record. There are several basic differences. First of all, PHR is based on a professional record with very substantive medical capabilities that allow users to record a longitudinal view of their lifetime history in terms of a specific problem or event or in a time-oriented sense. This means that all aspects of health can be recreated for any moment in time.