An assortment of new products allow consumers to use their desktop computers or PDAs to gather, update and store their medical information in the form of a personal health record, according to U.S. News & World Report.
A desktop program or Internet-based system might be the best way for consumers to store health data at home, U.S. News reports. Available products on the market include:
- HealthFrame, a downloadable product that costs about $40 and allows users to track physician appointments, input medications and indicators such as blood pressure, weight and cholesterol data, and attach doctors' notes and billing receipts;
- Medikeeper, an Internet-based standard record-keeping program, includes a "MediLibrary" of in-depth information on diseases or conditions, and a toll-free phone number that health professionals can call to access patients' PHRs in an emergency. It costs users $5 per month, or $8 for two people; and
- EMRy Stick plugs into any USB flash drive and cost users $50 to create up to 10 different medical profiles and print summaries of the data. Physicians can update patients' record via their office computers during doctor visits, and all data are password-protected and encrypted.
Kaiser Permanente and Partners Healthcare in Boston have created their own Internet-based systems that are integrated with their electronic health records,
U.S. News reports.
Steve Downs, deputy director of Health Group at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said that consumers should check the security and privacy policies of the products or services they purchase. The American Health Information Management Association has created a Web site,
www.myphr.com, to help patients select and set up PHRs (Shulman,
U.S. News & World Report, 9/11).