Adoption & evaluation of personal health record (PHR) system

Personal Health Record (PHR) is an emerging web-based Healthcare IT System, which is a hot topic of discussion among healthcare professionals and many common people. Its a very new concept and many companies are offering PHR services to their customers. PHR is created and kept up-to-date by the user, healthcare providers or insurance companies. User can enter their information and manage their PHR. PHR can include everything from medical histories to test results, physicians notes, prescriptions and information from their pharmacies and insurance companies. Hence PHR empowers the patients and gives them full access to their healthcare data. Many employers, insurance companies, hospitals, and physicians are offering PHR services to their consumers. There are also many web-sites from where consumers can sign up for free PHRs services. Due to many benefits associated with PHR services, consumers find it very attractive to use PHR. But there are also many concerns hindering adoption of PHR. In this paper we shall review the factors affecting adoption of PHR systems using Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and formulate hypothesis for PHR adoption.