Revolutionizing patient control of health information.

In traditional health care interactions, clinicians are the holders of patients’ medical information. In recent years, this information has become increasingly likely to be in a structured electronic health record (EHR), the control of which lies with the physician. The general argument for EHRs is that they can improve quality of patient care by better coordination of information— indeed the province of Ontario is investing enormous resources to “provide a single, harmonized and coherent ehealth strategy for Ontario that supports the government’s health agenda” by 2015.1 The United States has a more aggressive plan to ensure wide implementation of EHRs by 2014 as part of the economic stimulus plan.2 In addition to better information coordination by clinicians, EHRs make it possible for patients to have access to their own health information. There are many reasons why providing patients with their health information and tools to manage their health might be beneficial. The role of the clinician as the “protector” of patients’ health information is being questioned,3,4 as an increasing number of patients are taking advantage of online personal health records (PHRs) or patientcontrolled health records (PCHRs) to collect, manage, and control their own health information.