Introduction
Taking care of one’s own well-being is a top priority when it comes to personal health. Maintaining an organized health history is crucial to making well-informed decisions about your health, just as you would prioritize your regular health routines. Personal Health Records (PHRS) are helpful in this situation. It acts as a digital repository for your medical records, making it accessible and enhancing interactions between a patient and your medical professionals.
Main Body
One of its clear strengths is that PHRs enable instant access to vital health information. Patients are increasingly being given the choice of PHR management in healthcare settings as electronic health records (EHRS) are adopted more widely. People may access their medical history, including any prescription drugs and diagnoses, at any time by using this digital ledger. When scheduling an appointment or when the specifics of a doctor’s visit start to escape memory, this is a valuable tool to refer to (Noblin et al., 2012).
Within these settings, PHRs do, however, have a weakness. Some people may need help comprehending the large quantity of information in these data. This idea is sometimes referred to as health literacy. Understanding test results, treatment plans, and intricate medical jargon in a primary care environment may take a lot of work, especially for older, less tech-savvy patients (Sarwal & Gupta, 2021). Thus, patients who were younger, more educated, and more tech adept were more likely to utilize PHRs.
PHRs also have the ability to enhance care coordination amongst medical professionals. Having a central repository for medical data facilitates the sharing of crucial information when several experts are engaged in a patient’s treatment, which is a strength. A more precise diagnosis and better-informed treatment options may result from this efficient interchange.
PHRs create legitimate privacy and security issues notwithstanding their advantages (Sarwal & Gupta, 2021). People need to be more concerned about the security of their sensitive information as health data shifts from paper to digital form. For the system to maintain the trust of the patient, this data must be protected. To allay these concerns, assurances of the dependability of security measures are necessary.
Within these settings, a verse from the Bible, when addressing the usage of electronic health data and possible booking, can be cited. This is notable in 1 Peter 5:7, which exhorts individuals to “cast all the anxiety on Him because He cares for you” (What Does the Bible Say About Health Care? 2020). While having personal convictions and religion may be reassuring and illuminating, relying on religious allusions to support arguments in healthcare is not always practical. Some people prefer a more secular or evidence-based justification for adopting EHRs over this strategy, which may not be appealing to everyone. It would be beneficial to support such religious analogies with factual data and persuasive secular arguments that emphasize the advantages of electronic health records in order to appeal to a larger audience.
Conclusion
Personal health records are a useful addition to the healthcare system. They expand people’s access to essential health information that can enable them to take care of their health and make wise decisions. Additionally, PHRSs support better patient-provider communication, which eventually enhances care coordination. However, there are difficulties, particularly with regard to privacy and health literacy. To make sure that PHRS helps all facets of the population, a more all-encompassing strategy is required to tackle these problems. Furthermore, while faith may be consoling, decisions about health care must be backed by reasonable, evidence-based reasoning that is understandable to individuals of all faiths.
References
Noblin, A. M., Wan, T. T., & Fottler, M. (2012). The impact of health literacy on a patient’s decision to adopt a personal health record. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 9(1).
Sarwal, D., & Gupta, V. (2021). Personal Health Record. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. Web.
What Does the Bible Say About Health Care? (2020). Openbible.info. Web.