Project HealthDesign Series

Project HeathDesign was a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation designed to stimulate innovation in the development of personal health record systems by supporting design and prototyping efforts that focused on the needs, preferences and living environments of individuals. The project promoted a systems approach to personal health records in which an array of personal health applications would be built upon a common platform of core data elements.

The School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted the Project HealthDesign National Program Office (NPO) from 2006-2014. In Round 2 (2010-2012) the NPO led five teams of researchers to create innovative technological solutions to help patients manage personal health data, including observations of daily living (ODL). Technical solutions ranged from "smartphone" apps to tablet based solutions, including innovative displays and remote storage solutions. Working with diverse groups of clinical partners and patients, the teams were challenged to: 1) identify, capture, and store ODLs for their target patient populations; 2) analyze, interpret and display ODL data to extract clinically useful information; 3) use this information to provide feedback to patients so they could better manage their conditions and improve their health; and 4) enable patients to share this information with members of their clinical care team in ways that easily integrated into their clinical workflow.