2009

Hietala, Henri; Ikonen, Veikko; Korhonen, Ilkka; Lähteenmäki, Jaakko; Maksimainen, Anna; Pakarinen, Vesa; Pärkkä, Juha; Saranummi, Niilo

27 partners including VTT participated into the formulation of a roadmap for an ecosystem of Personal Health Record (PHR) based services. The group comprised of application and con-tent developers, IT service providers, healthcare organizations, insurance agencies and gov-ernmental and national organizations that set policies and operating conditions. The aim with this exercise was to provide an environment for Finnish companies to excel in the interna-tional competition for PHR based services. The report starts with an analysis of the state of the art of PHR in Finland and internationally and positions PHR against national and international eHealth development activities, especially against the Electronic Medical Record. During this process it has became clear that what we are really aiming at is to contribute towards the crea-tion of a health service environment where citizens have the possibility and means to take charge of managing their own health and acute and chronic illnesses in partnership with healthcare professionals. In this environment citizens are genuinely active and equal partners in managing their own health. In this equal partnership it is understood and accepted that whereas healthcare professionals are experts in healthcare related issues citizens are experts in how they lead their lives, what life styles they adopt and what choices they make. The new service environment would comprise of services for the public sector and of services provided in the marketplace. The PHR ecosystem partners produce solutions to both sectors. The re-maining part of the report is devoted to describing and discussing the ecosystem and its com-ponents from various viewpoints. The report concludes with an outline of a plan for setting up the ecosystem. The implementation of the plan is currently ongoing in the 2nd phase of the FeelGood project.