in many countries around the world, including iran, obesity is reaching epidemic proportions. doctors have recently taken, or expressed support for, an extreme ‘personal responsibility for health’ policy against obesity: refusing services to obese patients. this policy may initially seem to improve patients’ incentives to fight obesity. but turning access to medical services into a benefit depe...

In this book, planned for the various college-level groups, the author presents in a comprehensive manner a vast amount of information concerning personal and community health. Anatomy, physiology, and other underlying sciences are discussed sufficiently to clarify and support the health teaching. The book is well illustrated and is written in a manner to arouse and hold the interest of the rea...

Over the past year, several payers, employers, and commercial vendors have announced personal health record projects. Few of these are widely deployed and few are fully integrated into ambulatory or hospital-based electronic record systems. The earliest adopters of personal health records have many lessons learned that can inform these new initiatives. We present three case studies--MyChart at ...

OBJECTIVE The study characterized three groups with different levels of familiarity with personal health information management (PHIM) in terms of their demographics, health knowledge, technological competency, and information sources and barriers. In addition, the authors examined differences among PHIM groups in subjective self-ratings and objective test scores for health literacy. METHODS ...

Web-based personal health records (PHRs) are widely available to ordinary consumers at present, but the existing PHR systems have limited intelligence and can fulfill only a small portion of users’ healthcare needs. Previously, we proposed the concept of intelligent PHR (iPHR) to improve PHR’s capability and usability. By introducing and extending expert system technology, Web search technology...

The paper addresses the complex interplay between patients, healthcare professionals, and technology in relation to the treatment of chronic patients. It reflects on an ongoing interdisciplinary action research project striving to design and implement IT support for communication and collaboration in the distributed heterogeneous network of chronic patients and the healthcare professionals that...

A number of applications based on personal health records (PHRs) are emerging in the field of health care and wellness. PHRs empower patients by giving them control over their health data. Health data for PHRs can be supplied by patients, wellness providers and health care providers. Health care providers may use the PHRs to provide medical care. Unfortunately, the quality of the health data in...