Information Technology Standards for Personal Health Records

Are PHRs ready for standards? Are standards ready for PHRs?

CHICAGO, June 12, 2008—The rapidly-growing personal health record (PHR) market has triggered a need for common technical standards that will help PHRs gain traction with providers, payers and consumers. In an effort to unify the healthcare industry’s understanding of what PHR means, recently the National Alliance for Health Information Technology concluded  a year-long process to create a consensus-based definition for the term to establish common ground, according to an article in the June issue of the Journal of AHIMA.

Technical standards may share the same goal, but need technical specifications that promote desired characteristics such as strong security controls or the ability for different information technology (IT) systems to communicate with each other. The article explains that numerous existing and emerging  IT standards already apply to PHRs—as they are currently envisioned—that can help advance PHR adoption through their ability to facilitate the gathering and exchange of health information or ensure security. A defining feature of the current PHR market is the speed with which it is evolving; thereby making it difficult to judge the standards that PHRs may require in the future.

Information Technology Standard for PHRs includes a sidebar that describes several features in the Alliance’s definition including two that stand out:

1. Only electronic records are defined.
2. The record itself is defined but not the system that produces it.

A second sidebar explains the PHR definition results from a contract issued by the office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to reach agreement on definitions for five key health IT terms: records terms, network terms, literature review, two public forums, and two public comment periods.

Read the complete article in the June issue of the Journal of AHIMA or online at journal.ahima.org.

About AHIMA

The American Health Information Management Association is America’s leading professional society whose mission is to “improve healthcare by advancing best practices and standards for health information management and [serve as] the trusted source for education, research and professional credentialing.” AHIMA represents more than 51,000 specially educated HIM professionals who serve healthcare and the public by managing, analyzing and utilizing data vital for health system management.