NYC Personal Health Record Systems for Community-Based Health Promotion.
A Request for Information

On April 13th, 2011 the Fund for Public Health in New York, Inc. (FPHNY) and the Primary Care Information Project (PCIP) of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) issued a Request for Information (RFI) with the intention of identifying preferred vendors of a Personal Health Record (PHR) customized for use by people participating in community-based health promotion programs. Find the RFI at FPHNY’s website (http://www.fphny.org/whatsnew/rfps).

The RFI is based on close consultations with community-based organizations in New York (faith-based and senior centers). The membership of these organizations take part in community-based blood pressure screening programs and, by sharing their outcomes with trusted Lay Health Workers (LHW), receive counseling and advice for the prevention and management of chronic disease. DOHMH provides technical assistance and blood pressure monitors.

Access to a PHR system could make these programs more effective by enabling members to share their information with LHWs more easily, more securely, and in a way that is more conducive to effective counseling and health promotion.

This RFI envisions a PHR system that would strengthen community-based health promotion in the following ways:
A. Providing community members with access to a PHR that supports their efforts to prevent and manage chronic disease and allows them to securely and electronically share information with trusted care-givers. This will require applications for data visualization, goal-setting and alerting.

B. To provide lay health workers (LHWs) with a Community Health Dashboard that:
a. Enables LHWs to perform targeted outreach to members at risk of adverse health events. This will require a customized registry function capable of generating lists of members sorted by data values.
b. Enables LHWs to track trends in the population health of all consenting community members using a PHR. This will require the visualization of aggregated data shared with the LHW.


Promoting the adoption of Personal Health Records is one component of the DOHMH strategy to activate patients and communities to engage in chronic disease prevention and management.

A Question and Answer Session regarding this RFI will be held on April 26th.
Letters of Intent are due on April 29th
The final response is due on May 20th

For more information, contact Thomas Cannell at tcannell@health.nyc.gov