A Cost Model for Personal Health Records (PHRs)

Personal health records (PHRs) are a rapidly expanding area in medical informatics due to the belief that they may improve healthcare delivery and control costs of care. To truly understand the full potential value of a technology, a cost analysis is critical.However, little evidence exists on the value potential of PHRs, and a cost model for PHRs does not currently exist in the literature.This paper presents a sample cost model for PHR systems, which include PHR infrastructure and applications. We used this model to examine the costs of provider-tethered, payer-tethered, third-party, and interoperable PHRs. Our model projects that on a per-person basis, third-party PHRs will be the most expensive followed by inter operable PHRs, and then provider-tethered PHRs and payer-tethered PHRs are the least expensive. Data interfaces are a major cost driver, thus these findings underscore the need for standards development and use in the implementation ofPHR systems.