Why Is It Important To Maintain A PHR?

A personal health record or PHR is where data related to the health and care guidelines of a patient is maintained for them and by themselves. However there is an electronic medical record also available which are maintained by the institutions. The main role of a PHR is to provide accurate medical history of an individual. A PHR may contain a range of information about an individual, such as, allergies and drug reactions, family disease history, chronic disease, number of hospitalizations, x-ray reports, lab tests, prescription record, surgeries, vaccinations, ODLS, etc. There are several ways of maintaining a PHR, some of which are, paper; where an individual can write his medical condition and other facts about his health on a paper kept safely, electronic devices; there are personal computer based software available through which an individual may record the same, we applications; this is similar to electronic devices but more easily accessible on any computer that has an internet connection, there are other ways such as patient portals. There are many ways in which PHR can be beneficial to patients as well as medical experts. This provides a strong and accurate resource of the areas of treatment and also provides guidelines for the medical and other procedures.
This also helps clinicians provide better treatment as all the information about the patients medical condition can be found all in one place. There are however several barriers such as limited education, access to computer or internet, specially in low income groups, all the above collectively may be called the digital divide. Functional limitations are also