A personal health recorder is a software application that is computer based and allows an individual to store huge amount of health information like hospitalizations, encounters i.e. communication and visits, illness, medications, family history, lab results, surgeries, immunization, allergies, and some general information regarding the doctor visits. Basically, it makes the digital health record and it can be very beneficial for you if you had a very complex health history.

A digital PHR or personal health recorder PHR ensures you that all your health information is available in a secured way. In addition, it facilitates the flow of information among your health-care providers. This means you can get to know whether single physician is operating or treating you or several physicians are employed in your care. You can take out the information verbally, or in print-out form, or can transfer it in the external drives like pen drives. This ease of transferring the medical data is very vital and important as 18% of the medical errors take place because of the inadequate information of the patient. Moreover, in some cases, medical records are misplaced, or doctor is retired, hospital passes the old records to the storage place. In all these cases, patient have to suffer a lot, thus it is best to use PHR.

Another important reason for having PHR is that all your health care expenses can be reduced. You have seen that doctors use the objective and subjective information for your diagnosis and treatment plan. Objective information is something that can recorded and measured like laboratory results, x-rays reports, and physical exam findings. While subjective data is that can be expressed by you like your symptoms. All these information can be well stored in PHR and you can use it whenever you require the information.