Next Gen PHR's that Zing!

Personal Health Record (PHR) utilization in the US is dismal and not going anywhere fast. Many take this to mean that the concept has no value to consumers. I tend to believe the potential value is great but the currently available PHR tools and platforms are usability, functionality and interoperaboility nightmares that provide unfulfilling user experiences. (I will tell you how I really feel in a few minutes!) That may soon change. SysCon Media is reporting today (http://www.sys-con.com/node/2124318) on an intriguing concept that a company called Cloud Ventures in Canada is developing. A soon to be released white paper describing their so called ‘ONE Cloud Services’ tool which is a platform design for Cloud services based on OpenNebula that’s intended to deliver a suite of application services that tie in to the E-Health Ontario ONE program, sounds very interesting! A key part of this is capability for a ‘Personal Cloud EMR‘.
Personal Cloud
Personal Cloud refers to the aspect of how the Cloud will evolve to become a ‘Personal Data Store’ for all of our files and records. It’s a topic that was initially envisioned by Identity experts like Drummond Reed, and has since matured into mainstream developments such as consumer services from vendors like Iomega. These two different perspectives highlight the two critical foundations – The storage services for your files and data, and then also the standards and architecture for the emerging ‘Identity Ecosystem’ that will provide the mechanisms for controlling the security features for how it is shared with others.
This ecosystem will take many years to fully evolve and includes core building blocks such as OAuth which enables “Social Sign-on”, a means of joining up web sites via usernames and passwords, that vendors like Janrain cater for.
It then extends from here right through to a sophisticated ‘dataweb’ where these foundations facilitate sharing of all kinds of personal data. Frameworks for enabling and managing this data flow include the Kantara UMA program, and the OASIS XDI protocol.
These developments will enable all kinds of opportunities for service providers, ranging from simply managing the authentication process as a service, like Verizon, through to “data as a service”, where banks, utilities and other key organizations provide data for online real-time web services.
Personal Cloud EMR
As well as general purpose file sharing this Personal Cloud ecosystem will evolve to cater for various industry-specific functions, like a ‘Personal Cloud EMR’ – Electronic Medical Record. In short why have a centralized model where the hospital stores all of the electronic patient records in one big application. Why not instead have a distributed approach, where each patient stores their own record, via their own account, on the Cloud?
Considering that even advanced countries like Canada are still struggling with EMR adoption rates, it’s a hugely powerful idea to instead harness ‘the Crowd’ to tackle it.
Personal Cloud services, in combination with dataweb control mechanisms, will make the ideal combination possible – Very easy sharing of information in an entirely secure and controlled manner.
A blog from Anil John provides a simple but clear example of how it will be possible through this system to specify data is shared in a very granular manner, demonstrating the user-centric control of information that UMA and XDI are intended for.
While it remains to be seen if this idea will work any better for EMR’s than any of the current and emerging systems (not likely), it could be a significant boon to the nascent PHR world, taking them from clunky electronic mediums for text, graphic and other data storage to personal, point of need, real time, health and social service enabling platforms. If this comes to fruition, we might just begin to see the revolution in PHR utilization and patient engagement in their health and healthcare that many believe is required for substantial and sustained improvements in population health.