Iowa Personal Health Record

Iowa Personal Health Record graphicDescription

Iowa Personal Health Record (PHR) is an integrated web application for online recruitment, consenting, randomization, and data collection accompanied by tools for patients to track personal health information, message securely with study personnel, and receive clinical and behavioral interventions such as pharmacist case management.

Iowa PHR supports survey development and deployment to patients, and research team members can also enter data. Iowa PHR is an account-based platform that facilitates research participant use over time. In addition to research applications, Iowa PHR supports implementation science that bridges research and clinical practice: it runs in a HIPAA certified environment and has been used to support patient data in a pharmacist-delivered telemedicine clinical practice.

Using Iowa PHR for research

Iowa PHR offers iOS and Android platforms to obtain signed informed consents from prospective study participants. Subjects can download a free app, review and sign an informed consent document, and be taken to your study website (or the Iowa PHR platform).

A customizable consent letter web form template is also available for studies that do not require written documentation of consent.

Iowa PHR was developed in 2008 in collaboration with older adults as a stand-alone system for an AHRQ-funded study on older adults and medication management. Its features have since evolved and expanded to support clinician and research administrator roles for several other studies across several disease applications:

Iowa PHR may be a good fit for your project if

  • You want to be able to direct all participants to a single website
  • You want subjects to return to a study website multiple times over the course of the study
  • You need to be able to implement more than one of the following tasks:
    • Consent participants
    • Track personal health info
    • Data entry
    • Messaging
    • Send notification
    • Track subject status and engagement
    • Share documents
    • Administer online surveys
    • Display custom content
    • Provide individually-tailored feedback

A customizable platform

Iowa PHR was developed with an eye toward study-specific configuration, so most of the features can be optionally used in your study and/or customized as applicable:

  • Customizable dashboard for patients and/or study participants and personal health tracking
  • Secure messaging between patients/study participants and research team members
  • Personal health data tracking modules and reports (e.g., a1C, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, medications, health care visits)
  • Survey / form development and deployment
  • Secure file sharing (with other team members and/or study participants)
  • Study population-specific web page text
  • Website user navigation logs (timestamps)
  • Configurable population management dashboard for study personnel, including…
    • Tracking of user health conditions, labs, medications and side effects, pharmacies, and allergies
    • Clinical encounter and study visit management; ability to email calendar appointments
    • Study personnel access to form/survey and person-entered health data
    • User status and account management
    • Username/password reset/retrieval

Projects

Personal Health Records and Medication Use Quality among Older Adults

  •          Elizabeth Chrischilles, Professor, College of Public Health
  •          Results

Iowa PHR Pharmacist Connection Study

Online Way for Patients to Augment Cancer Registry Data (ONWARD)

  • Elizabeth Chrischilles, Professor, College of Public Health
  • Screenshots

Nighttime Dosing of Anti-Hypertensive Medications

Improved Cardiovascular Risk Reduction to Enhance Rural Primary Care (ICARE)

MEDication Focused Outpatient Care for Underutilization of Secondary Prevention (MEDFOCUS)

  • Barry Carter, Professor, College of Pharmacy
  • methods

Custom development available

Our team is happy to work with you to develop and implement custom features, including:

  • MyChart-based recruitment (send unique links to UIHC patients and direct them to Iowa PHR for study information, online enrollment, data collection etc.). 
  • Reports and data views to monitor study progress
  • Data writing between servers (e.g., existing database, REDCap, etc.)
  • Action Center – Lists important information for study participants with custom text/groupings/icons.
  • Heart Health Interactive Survey – Users can take and update survey items and receive multi-tiered feedback on recommended next steps to reduce risk factors.  
  • Other customized content available to meet your study needs.

Eligibility

University of Iowa faculty or collaborating faculty involved in human subjects research or individuals conducting research under the direction of a faculty member.

Data and data security

All Iowa PHR data are stored on secure University of Iowa College of Public Health and Institute for Clinical and Translational Science servers.

Support for Iowa PHR

Iowa PHR is supported by the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (ICTS) and College of Public Health (CPH) at the University of Iowa.

Pricing

  • Free initial consultation
  • Cost depends on multiple factors, including extend of customization and administrative support required, the number and type of accounts, etc. 

Request a free consultation

To request a free consultation, please complete this form.

For more information about the process of using Iowa PHR for your project, view these slides.

Contact info

For other questions about Iowa PHR please contact:

Brian Gryzlak

For Investigators