Helping clinicians and patients navigate electronic patient portals: ethical and legal principles

Patient portals are technological innovations that allow patients electronic access to their personal health information. They have the potential to transform the delivery of health care. Patients have long had the ability to request their own medical record, usually through an onerous and time-consuming paper-based approach. With the advent of remote digital access, not only is viewing health information easier, but allowing proxy access--or granting permission to a person other than the patient to view the patient's health information--is increasingly more common. Large corporations (e.g., Apple) have recognized this shift and are beginning to offer consumer-driven platforms that are bound to transform our current philosophy of record access. Although health care practitioners may have valid concerns about patient portals and the digital environment for health records, risk can be mitigated by placing legal and ethical principles at the forefront of technical design and portal governance.