Indivo: a personally controlled health record for health information exchange and communication

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Personally controlled health records (PCHRs), a subset of personal health records (PHRs), enable a patient to assemble, maintain and manage a secure copy of his or her medical data. Indivo (formerly PING) is an open source, open standards PCHR with an open application programming interface (API).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We describe how the PCHR platform can provide standard building blocks for networked PHR applications. Indivo allows the ready integration of diverse sources of medical data under a patient's control through the use of standards-based communication protocols and APIs for connecting PCHRs to existing and future health information systems.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The strict and transparent personal control model is designed to encourage widespread participation by patients, healthcare providers and institutions, thus creating the ecosystem for development of innovative, consumer-focused healthcare applications.</p