PHRs Will Need More Than Data to Flourish

A bit slow on the uptake, perhaps, but the business model for Personal Health Records is taking off. And the venture capital seeded in 2011 – an amount ranking second only to the vast health information management category – is set to yield new products and bolster existing ones. But will they really be ready for patients?

Raj Prabhu certainly thinks so. As managing partner of Mercom Capital Group, Prabhu explains that the investment money, some $83 million across a dozen deals, is being injected into fledgling PHR companies thinking of new ways to advance digital healthcare record keeping, taking personal health records in new directions to avoid going the way of Google Health.

“These new companies that are getting funded are doing more things - interacting with the doctors’ offices, creating payment systems, sending emails back and forth, and refilling prescriptions,” Prabhu said...