Social Media and Personal Health Records: A Natural Pairing or Threat to Privacy?

PHR Use
A personal health record manager is defined as a tool for managing one’s health and medical data in a safe, secure, usually digital, environment. It is typically an easy to use interface for people to enter their medical data and track certain aspects of their care, such as blood pressure, weight, cholesterol, and more. The number of people utilizing PHR tools is increasing, though the numbers of people using them are still fairly low – only 7% of Americans. With social media networks expanding, will integration of such media into PHR tools encourage more people to use them?

The California Healthcare Foundation conducted a survey in 2010 to find out more about the use, or lack thereof, of PHR programs. Some of the main findings of the survey indicate that patients who use PHRs learn more about their health and take actions to improve it. It also showed that low-income and chronically patients benefitted from PHR use and that many felt closer to their healthcare providers. Approximately half of the survey participants preferred to have the PHR provided by their physician. And 68% were concerned about privacy. Privacy is something that social networks struggle with consistently. How will a merger of social media and PHR maintain a patient’s confidential records AND remain HIPAA compliant? This may be one of the biggest hurdles for the PHR and social media pairing.

How Social Media Fits In
Social media, in the beginning, was used for social interaction. It didn’t take long for businesses to figure out that this was where their consumers were spending time and to figure out ways to use social media to promote themselves. MySpace is no longer a popular social venue, but Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and others have hundreds of millions of users. Facebook alone has over 750 million active users. It was only a matter of time before the healthcare community found a way to interact in this type of medium.





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