Utility, Value, and Benefits of Contemporary Personal Health Records: Integrative Review and Conceptual Synthesis

Abstract

Background: Contemporary personal health record (PHR) technologies offer a useful platform for individuals to maintain a lifelong record of personally reported and clinically sourced data from various points of medical care.

Objective: This paper presents an integrative review and synthesis of the extant literature on PHRs. This review draws upon multiple lenses of analysis and deliberates value perspectives of PHRs at the product, consumer, and industry levels.

Methods: Academic databases were searched using multiple keywords related to PHRs for the years 2001-2020. Three research questions were formulated and used as selection criteria in our review of the extant literature relevant to our study.

Results: We offer a high-level functional utility model of PHR features and functions. We also conceptualize a consumer value framework of PHRs, highlighting the applications of these technologies across various health care delivery activities. Finally, we provide a summary of the benefits of PHRs for various health care constituents, including consumers, providers, payors, and public health agencies.

Conclusions: PHR products offer a myriad of content-, connectivity-, and collaboration-based features and functions for their users. Although consumers benefit from the tools provided by PHR technologies, their overall value extends across the constituents of the health care delivery chain. Despite advances in technology, our literature review identifies a shortfall in the research addressing consumer value enabled by PHR tools. In addition to scholars and researchers, our literature review and proposed framework may be especially helpful for value analysis committees in the health care sector that are commissioned for the appraisal of innovative health information technologies such as PHRs.

Keywords: PHR; consumer health informatics; electronic personal health records; functionality synopsis; value analysis.

Figure 1

A high-level functional utility model of personal health record systems.

Figure 2

Personal health record consumer value: a mapping of personal health record functionality to the health care delivery value chain. PHR: personal health record.