Utility, value and benefits of contemporary personal health records: Integrative review and conceptual synthesis

BACKGROUND: Contemporary personal health record (PHR) technologies provide a useful platform for individuals to maintain a lifelong record of personally reported and clinically sourced data from various points of medical care. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents an integrative review and synthesis of the extant literature on PHRs. Our review draws upon multiple lens-of-analysis and deliberates value perspectives of PHRs at the product, consumer, and industry levels. METHODS: Academic databases were consulted using multiple keywords related to PHRs for the years 2001 to 2020. Three research questions were formulated and used as selection criteria in our review of extant literature relevant to our study. RESULTS: We offer a high-level functional utility model of PHR features and functions. We also conceptualize a consumer value framework of PHRs highlighting the applications of these technologies across various healthcare delivery activities. Lastly, we provide a summary of benefits of PHRs to various healthcare constituents including consumers, providers, payors and public health agencies. CONCLUSIONS: PHR products today offer a myriad of content, connectivity and collaboration based features and functions for their users. While consumers benefit from the tools provided by PHR technologies, their overall value extends across constituents of the healthcare delivery chain. Despite advances in the technology, our literature review identifies a shortfall in research addressing the consumer value enabled by PHR tools. In addition to scholars and researchers, our literature review and proposed framework may be especially helpful for value analysis committees in the healthcare sector that are commissioned for the appraisal of innovative health information technologies such as PHRs.