Building a personal health record from a nursing perspective

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Nursing Informatics
• Consumer Health Informatics

Background:

• The increasing demand for accessible health information and cost-effective care necessitates advanced personal health records (PHRs).
• Nursing's crucial role in healthcare delivery requires integration into PHR development and expansion.
• Limited research exists on nursing's specific contributions to PHR systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and develop an Internet-based personal health record (PHR) named IowaPHR.
• To demonstrate the integration of nursing principles and informatics into a PHR system.
• To enhance consumer health engagement through a nursing-informed PHR.

Main Methods:

• Developed IowaPHR with innovations including community health focus, interactive self-assessment using transformed nursing language, and a user-friendly interface with health trends and diary functions.
• Transformed standardized nursing language into consumer-friendly questions for the self-assessment feature.
• Evaluated the PHR by experts on content, navigation, task completion time, information retrieval, and overall presentation.

Main Results:

• Experts provided high scores for key aspects of the IowaPHR evaluation.
• The average time for users to complete tasks within the PHR was 16.25 minutes.

Conclusions:

• The IowaPHR enables self- and caregiver observation of health conditions, aiding in problem identification, intervention planning, and patient education.
• This PHR advances nursing informatics by enhancing nursing capacity in consumer health.
• IowaPHR represents a significant contribution to the broader field of health informatics, promoting patient empowerment.