Consumer Health Informatics and Personal Heath Records

     Consumer Assessment and Personal Health Records (PHRs) 

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                          Questions asked to the Consumers

·         Gender

·         Age

·          Educational level

·         Did they have health insurance?

·          What is their socio-economic status?

·         Do you use the Internet to access health information? And what types of information they look up from the internet?

·         Do you have Internet access at home or a Smartphone?

·         What sites they use more frequently and how they determine that site is trusted

·         How many of you know about personal health record? And how many of you have a personal health record?

·         Why should I have a personal health record?

·         What you do in personal health record?

·         How often they use it and are it really helping you achieves any of your goals.

           Rationale for the questions and the result of the interview

            

               The world and the internet are changing how individuals gather healthcare information and have helped the population to foster the consumer healthcare movement. The above questions were asked to find out how many of them uses internet for health related matters and what is their background and the socio economic status of each consumer. Few questions were asked to find out the reasons for using the internet for maintaining their health and how it is helping them and how easier is to keep track and maintain the PHRs.  From this interview and other studies I learned that many consumers are using PHRs and most of them use internet for health related matters. It is easily understood that it is very easy to use a PHRs and maintain it. Especially the young generation is using internet for all their related matters. They find it easier to maintain the information in the computer than papers.

                Personal health record (PHR) is a record of information about our health. In PHRs, we can control the health information and we can get to it anywhere at any time through the Internet. PHRs use secure technology to protect our information from unauthorized use. Access to PHRs requires us to set up a unique user ID and password. Once we log in, we can determine who can see our information. We can use a PHR to keep track of information from our healthcare visits, lab tests, allergies, and childhood immunizations, prescription doses, past surgeries and diagnoses, and family medical history. Over-the-counter drug use and refills, health promotion activities such as exercise and diet routines, as well as track your personal health goals and priorities. The New York Times recently reported that only about 20 percent of Americans have computerized health records rather than paper ones, despite many health organizations providing free online personal health records to its members

                                

              According to these above interview questions, the results are as follows,

·         Gender – Women use computer more than men for health reasons and maintaining a personal health record.

·         Age- I used aged 23-45 years old consumers and 80% of them use internet for health problems and with questions. But only 40% of them use personal health record.

·          Educational level- most of them had their maters level education in computers and related engineering (70%) and 30% had bachelor’s degree.

·         Did they have health insurance?- all of them had health insurance

·          What is their socio economic status? They all from medium level of socioeconomic status.

·         Do you use the Internet to access health information? And what types of information they look   up from the internet? All of them use internet for any kind of health questions. Most of them use it for finding doctors and to get further information about health problems and medicines.  

·         Do you have Internet access at home or a Smartphone? - All of them had internet access at home. 80% have smart phone, I pad or any kinds of tablet to track their health.

·         What sites they use more frequently and how they determine that site is trusted. – Most of them use webmd.com site for further information. They trust each site according to the security provided by the site. They look at the publishers. If it is by the reputed doctors or any facility, they use those websites.

·         How many of you know about personal health record? -And how many of you have a personal health record? 60% knew about personal health records and all of them started making personal health records. But 40% were using the PHRs and frequently updating it for doctor’s visits and prescriptions (auto refill).

·         Why should I have a personal health record? 60% knew about the importance of making a personal health record and 40% were using it. They use it to easily collect, store and maintain lifelong personal health information. They also use it to share relevant information with the referred medical persons.

·         What you do in personal health record? They use PHRs for maintaining the doctor’s visits and medications. They usually track their weights and the daily food intake with personal health record.

·         How often they use it and is it really helping you achieves any of your goals? 40% of those who maintaining their PHRs use it regularly ad update it as it happens. They are achieving their goals by tracking their current health information via PHRs.  They use PHRs to maximize the health benefits.

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Biji George