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The PING Personally Controlled Electronic Medical Record System: Technical Architecture

Affiliations of the authors: Children's Hospital Informatics Program (WWS, KDM, ISK), Division of Emergency Medicine (WWS, KDM), and Division of Endocrinology (ISK), Children's Hospital Boston, Boston, MA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA (KDM, ISK).

Correspondence and reprints: William W. Simons, MS, Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Enders 1, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115; e-mail: <william.simons{at}childrens.harvard.edu>.

Received for publication: 03/26/04; accepted for publication: 09/21/04.

Despite progress in creating standardized clinical data models and interapplication protocols, the goal of creating a lifelong health care record remains mired in the pragmatics of interinstitutional competition, concerns about privacy and unnecessary disclosure, and the lack of a nationwide system for authenticating and authorizing access to medical information. The authors describe the architecture of a personally controlled health care record system, PING, that is not institutionally bound, is a free and open source, and meets the policy requirements that the authors have previously identified for health care delivery and population-wide research.