Personal health records (PHRs) are the most disruptive development in health care since the Mayo Clinic provided all its physicians with access to the medical notes of all its patients. Now patients will share access with clinicians.

For many clinicians, this is an exciting opportunity to work better with our patients. PHR technology arrives, not a moment too soon, to help us deal with our patients’ multiple, complex and unique illnesses. For patients, the technology is a welcome aid to taking control of their health. It is ideally suited for coordinating care amongst multiple specialists and institutions.

But with change come challenges. How do you share data with your patient while maintaining their privacy? How do you include these online tools with your busy schedule? How much will it cost to your existing spending on information technology? And can you get paid for doing all this extra work?

So when we start working with a clinical team, not only do we provide them with the best PHR platform, we also teach the clinicians and the patients how to use PHR technology.

Below, we make some of our teaching resources available. We hope you find them useful. And if you would like a member of our team to come and teach at your institution, do contact us, we love to help.

You can also keep up with the Patients Know Best team and the people we learn with through these web sites.