A National Patient-Centered E-Health Solution - The Experience from Down Under To-Date with the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR)

Given the current pressures on healthcare delivery to be cost effective yet provide high quality, healthcare systems are turning to ICT (information communication technology) to help resolve this conundrum. Such e-health solutions range from being on one-side patient controlled to the other end of the spectrum being provider controlled. However, most agree that these solutions should be patient-centric. Australia has opted for a unique solution in an attempt to have the best of both worlds; i.e, some level of patient control and some level of provider control. This system is known as the PCEHR (personally controlled electronic health record). The following serves to investigate this system and if it is patient centric. In particular, how well patient focus, patient activity and patient empowerment are supported and/or enabled.