Personal health information management

Integrating personal health information management (PHIM), which helps people manage their lives and actively participate in their own health care is discussed. Many health care services are delivered in outpatient settings, where patients receive care, patients assume significant responsibility for monitoring their own health status, managing their recovery, and communicating with clinicians from their home. This arises the necessity that the patients must store, maintain, and retrieve many kinds of health information, ranging from medication schedules to information researched online. Patients need tools that address the challenges and enable them to be involved in their health care, as well as to meet the responsibilities of their daily lives. These tools might allow patients to group together related information to support specific decisions. The tools include Web-based interfaces that grant them secure Internet access to portions of their electronic medical records.