The EHR discussion

Reading this morning Vince Kuraitis' blogpost, made me realise why I accepted Carlos' very kind invitation to become a guest writer to this blog.

Allow me to briefly introduce myself. I'm Lodewijk Bos, President of the ICMCC Foundation, the only global organisation that deals with patient-related ICT. For more see our website www.icmcc.org. We also bring a well visited news page on medical and care ICT related matters.
Recently I was first author of an article called the impatient patient. And that's how Carlos found me.

Back to Kuraitis' blogpost, called From PHRs to PHRSs.
After Katharina, in the US the idea that the patient should have his own record, a PHR, which should be independent from the "pure" medical record, was given an enormous impulse. (for more see Paul Tang et al.) From that moment on I have been fighting this concept in many of my blogs, articles and speeches.

Now, in his blog, Kuraitis turns around the wheel completely. (see picture)
You can discuss whether it should be the way Kuraitis proposes or the way I have been promoting, where the PHR is an integral and equal part of the EHR, i.e. PHR + EMR = EHR.

But the fact that it took 3 years to come up with the concept that the new generation PHR should be an integrated record where I, and many others with me, have been saying this over and over again, makes me an impatient patient.