Online electronic services for preventive and customer-centric healthcare: Experiences from PHR deployment in the Tampere region, Finland

Customer-centricity and preventive healthcare are commonly set as objectives when reforming healthcare processes. Online services for citizens are important enablers of new preventive and customer-centric care models. This report focuses on personal health records (PHRs) and related services provided for individuals to help them access, manage and share personal health data either independently or as customers of healthcare services. The objective of the report is to provide useful information for anyone working with PHRs, patient portals and self-care systems - in particular professionals who are responsible for purchasing and implementing such systems. The report introduces the main concepts related to PHRs and highlights their role in disease prevention. It also addresses some related technical aspects, particularly from the interoperability perspective, and highlights the most relevant legislation concerning the implementation and use of PHRs. The study has been carried out within the framework of the Wedge of Cranes (WoC) project, which involved the development of new online tools supporting customer-centric care models. The report describes the PHR procurement and deployment activity performed during the WoC project as a use case demonstrating the PHR development process. Results are given based on the user study completed within the framework of the WoC project.