ArticleDigital health
A systematic review of the effect of personal health records on patient activation.
Article in Digital health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Patient Experience from a Pilot Study Implementing Software-Based Post-COVID Case Management in GP Practices-A Qualitative Process Evaluation.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- An integrative framework for estimating personal healthy life expectancy from personal health records.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Personal health records (PHRs) or patient portals have been on the healthcare policy agenda for many countries as a promising mechanism to support patient-centred healthcare by making medical records accessible to patients and those assisting patients in health self-management. Studies on clinical outcome have been inconsistent. To help us to understand why, we propose to look at measures that precede clinical outcome, specifically patient engagement and activation. Patient activation describes the knowledge, skills and confidence a person has in managing their own health and healthcare. Objective: To systematically review the current evidence on the impact of PHRs on patient activation. Methods: A literature search was conducted for randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies published up to January 2024 across EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and PubMed. Publications were included in the study if they examined any association between PHR use and activation. Results: The search initially produced 3062 papers for review, of which 88 full-text articles were screened for eligibility. Two reviewers assessed 22 of these articles, and 8 papers were identified as meeting the selection criteria. Among these, seven studies found no statistically significant differences in activation. However, one study reported a significantly greater effect than the others. Data from seven randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies examining the effects of PHRs on patient activation and similar measures were extracted for meta-analysis. Overall, the use of PHRs was associated with a 0.41 standardised mean difference increase in activation (95% confidence interval 0.31-0.51). There was a high degree of heterogeneity ( Conclusion: Most studies showed little impact on activation, but one study found a large effect. This study notably offered PHRs combined with health coaching and training in the use of the system to their intervention group, which may indicate an important requirement for how to get the best out of a PHR system.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.