Project HealthDesign, is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a US charitable organisation, and is a suite of nine projects, with interdisciplinary teams, that aims to "support pioneers in health information technology to design next-generation personal health record (PHR) systems".

Patti Brennan, a nursing colleague of long-standing, is National Program Director, and gave the closing keynote at the SINI2008 conference last week. I have provided a blog report of her session elsewhere (http://www.differance-engine.net). Anyone with an interest in the development of PHRs would be well advised to look at the projects and some of the specific activities they are exploring; puts NHS Healthspace into the shade, and some of the areas they are exploring could well be models for the kinds of developments Lord Darzi's recent review seemed to suggest we ought to be striving towards - if those responsible in the NHS were far-thinking enough and actually looked at using some of the new technologies, as opposed to the old 'tried and trusted' ones they seem to like to rely on.

As the overview of PHRs on the project website states. "If PHR products and services are to realize their potential to help people lead healthy lives and become engaged participants in their care, they must evolve in ways that maximize opportunities for innovation in meeting the varied needs of a population that has increasingly diverse health needs and goals".

A report on the project will be launched in mid September. A presentation giving some of the background, and that formed part of the panel presentation at SINI2008 last week, is also available.

The Markle Foundation's 'Connecting for Health' website also has some interesting perspectives on personal health records - as opposed to NHS Connecting for Health, which doesn't seem to have a great deal to say about them.