What is a PHR? Definitions of Personal Health Record (PHR) Used in Literature—A Systematic Literature Review

The purpose of this article is to clarify how term personal health record (PHR) is defined and used in literature. A systematic literature review was conducted to find out what are used as definitions for personal health record. We found and screened in total 1,781 articles published in years 2000–2017. Four databases chosen in review were ScienceDirect, IEEEXplore, Proguest and Pubmed. After criteria screening 1,234 articles were taken under further analysis. Most of the articles did not have any definition for term “personal health record” (n = 1,001; 81%). Only 233 (19%) articles included some kind of definition of the term. Few definitions were found that are constantly used in the field of medical informatics. However, those definitions are in contradiction between others and overall discourse in field. Thus, we need clear and systematic structure for different PHRs and proposal for hierarchy is presented in this article.