In this paper we presented MyPHRMachines, a novel PHR system. Leveraging virtualization techniques, MyPHRMachines
allows patients to build lifelong personal health records. The records can be shared by the patient with any stakeholder
interested in those. MyPHRMachines allows also the controlled sharing of application software that is required to view and/or analyze health records. Patients seeking care by caregivers in different geographical areas will be able to reproduce their original health records, no matter the limitations imposed by the heterogeneity of local health care information systems. Moreover, as technology evolves, patients will always be able to use original software to view and analyzed data, even when that software becomes obsolete and possibly no longer supported by the stakeholder that produced the data.
Besides a clinical experimentation, to fairly assess patients’ propensity in using such an innovative PHR system as MyPHRMachines, we are currently working on extending our prototype in several ways. One of the major extensions regards creating an open App market for application software, through which medical software providers could compete to provide the best suited functionality required by patients. We are currently studying the issue of how various security techniques can be employed to protect data in MyPHRMachines at various levels, such as encryption techniques at the level of VM instance logs, private key transfers between RDP clients and remote VMs, and encryption at the level of mounted
network folders. Furthermore, we are surveying practitioners to understand more broadly and deeply the specific use cases for which MyPHRMachines forms a unique enabler. Finally, we will deploy data translation services to MyPHRMachines. Such services will enable a smooth transition from the already provided functional interoperability to deeper system interoperability. The private network folders will be used as the blackboard for exchanging data between different VMs.