The MyPHRMachines solution overcomes that second limitation of integrated PHRs as follows. First, it makes the
PHR information trustworthy by delivering original PHR data and related application software directly to care institutions instead of providing patient-entered information [30]. Second, the barrier to accessing a MyPHRMachines session is minimal, since only one hyperlink needs to be clicked for accessing the trusted health data and its corresponding software.
As far as architecture is concerned, PHR systems rely on a client-server, Web-based architecture [31]. Although Webbased access provides easy access by patients and caregivers, traditional PHR systems remain passive repositories of healthrelated data, which still require external application software for data visualization or analysis. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) can be used to integrate application software within Webbased PHRs. Application software will then have to be reprogrammed against the libraries and interfaces provided by the PHR platform, e.g. the Java and .NET libraries of HealthVault. MyPHRMachines does not pose that barrier.
On the one hand, MyPHRMachines preserves the benefit of a Web-based client, i.e., patient and caregivers only need
a browser to access data, but, on the other hand, MyPHRMachines extends the scope of traditional PHR systems by allowing to run the original application software to visualize and analyze data through virtualization. Caregivers and software providers will not have to reprogram their application software against a SaaS specification, e.g. Web services over SOAP, but can simply deploy their existing software in a VM image.