National disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, revealed the fragile nature of our medical record system. Many of the hurricane victims were without their most basic health information, such as their current prescriptions, immunization records, and hospital histories. This experience has heightened the need to automate our health care system. Technology is being targeted as a strategy to solve the problem of storing and retrieving personal and medical health information. The personal health record (PHR) and the electronic health record (EHR) are two efforts that strengthen the medical record system, improving health data storage and data retrieval. The PHR is maintained by individual family members and is designed to detail health information throughout the individual's life span. On the other hand, the EHR is maintained by ...