This is the third part of our series on personal health records. Click here to read Part I and Part II; and stay tuned to Benefits Selling Weekly for the rest of the series.

A prominent new enhancement to personal health record technology is integration with disease management and wellness programs. This provides users with an interactive tool that can instantaneously issue evidence-based, patient-specific, clinical alerts when potential medical issues are identified. Bi-directional data sharing enables the two programs to complement one another in several ways:

• Member-derived data is captured via the PHR or a disease management nurse, and the information is aggregated with claims data and analyzed by clinical decision support technology.
• PHRs can be leveraged as a vehicle to encourage compliance with alerts generated from the member data and the decision support platform.
• A clinically intelligent PHR has the ability to recognize and notify users who qualify for specific disease management programs by sending customized enrollment invitations.

Additionally, PHRs can be integrated into value-based insurance design to enable members to see customized messages about co-pay reductions for essential medications that may be available to them for certain classes of drugs. This messaging is in addition to members receiving letters at home and the treating physicians receiving letters about the potential co-pay reduction.

Some Fortune 500 companies are already leading the adoption of dynamic PHRs by providing clinically intelligent tools to encourage workers to take more control of their personal health issues in an effort to reduce health care costs.