Grant: Team Grant: Community-Based Primary Healthcare - LOI

A Personal Health Record (PHR) is an "internet-based set of tools that allows people to access and coordinate their lifelong health information and make appropriate parts of it available to those who need it". A PHR can help patients with chronic conditions to manage better, communicate with their health care provider, and have their health information from their medical record anywhere they go. It can also help people who care for ageing relatives or young children. Several companies and groups are making PHRs in North America. PHRs will change the way primary health care is delivered in the community. PHRs will foster new ways (ie a new model) of primary health car delivery. There is not much research about how a PHR should be structured to be most useful or what the impacts might be on patient health or how health care is delivered. This program of research will look at these questions. The researchers come from across Canada and have different expertise and backgrounds. Many of them have worked with PHRs already in the areas of medications, pregnancy care and high blood pressure. The research will take place in several places across Canada where PHRs are now being developed and used. This will ensure many perspectives are taken into account. The first part of the research program will examine how patients and their health care providers would like to see PHRs created and used. The second part will study how useful they are in improving patients' health and the efficiency of the health care system.