Personalized Health Systems—Past, Present, and Future of Research Development and Implementation in Real-Life Environment

Personal health systems (PHS) are designed to provide the individual with tailored care while enabling the healthcare system to deliver high-quality care to large populations and maintain a sustainable system. Solutions using electronic health records (EHRs) that include predictive models for the risk of disease onset and deterioration enable the care provider to better identify and treat patients with chronic disease and provide personalized prevention. These tools are well-accepted by doctors and have been proven to improve health outcomes and reduce costs. Integrated telecare programs were implemented for comorbid patients showing improved clinical outcomes self-management and quality of life (QoL). However, different patient populations benefit in different ways from these care plans, and thus, continuous evaluation, service adaptation in a real-life environment set with clear outcome measures, is required for best results. The challenge of the PHS today is to acquire patient-generated data (PGD) and behavioral and patient-reported outcomes (PROs) for PHS development that can be combined with existing clinical data. Some initiatives of healthcare organizations [health maintenance organizations (HMOs)] in Israel demonstrate how this goal can be achieved with relatively small efforts by using a stepwise and agile approach to service implementation that improve service by enabling adoption and adaptation of the service in the short term while collecting data for advanced PHS development in the long term. This approach, combined with programs and incentive payments at the national level, creates an environment and infrastructure for collaboration between healthcare, academia, and industry for research, development, and implementation of future PHS. This article presents examples of PHS development and implementation from the Israeli healthcare system. We discuss the lessons learned and suggest new approaches for research, development implementation, and evaluation of PHS that will address the needs of future healthcare.