The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) today announced the
development of personal health record (PHR) technology that may soon
give patients the ability to add critical health information to the
electronic health records maintained by hospitals and physicians. UPMC
completed the proof-of-concept project in collaboration with Google
Health, Carnegie
Mellon University (CMU) and technology partner dbMotion.
“We are delighted to collaborate with UPMC on this innovative project,
which is specifically intended to empower patients”
Although PHRs are not new to health care—the idea was introduced
originally in the late 1970s—development has gained momentum with the
escalating use of electronic health records (EHRs) and the recent
promise of federal funding through the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Progress toward electronic PHRs has been
hindered, however, by the difficulty in aggregating data from a wide
range of unconnected “host” technologies, and presenting that
information to patients and physicians in such a way as to make the
information understandable and genuinely usable.
UPMC and its partners have overcome this obstacle with a flexible,
service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based interoperability platform,
developed by dbMotion, a company in which UPMC invested as part of a
strategic partnership. This platform shares and organizes patient
information in a meaningful way, regardless of the system or format in
which the data were originally stored. “The interoperability platform
allows us to connect disparate EHRs and automatically gather information
from various patient-facing applications throughout the UPMC system,
including ambulatory and acute care settings,” says William Fera, M.D.,
vice president, medical technologies, and medical director,
interoperability, at UPMC.
What distinguishes UPMC’s integration with Google Health—expected to be
launched for patients this spring—is the fact that the data will be
aggregated from throughout UPMC inpatient and ambulatory settings and
the sharing ultimately will be bi-directional, meaning that health care
providers can share information securely with patients through the PHR
and vice versa. The data will be part of the electronic medical record,
readily accessible to clinicians and usable in decision support tools.
“This is the first step in creating an interoperable, actionable PHR,”
says Dr. Fera. “Both patients and physicians will have access to the
information they need to truly work as partners in patient care.”