Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Patient-centered care improves the quality of life and health care, and reduces the costs of care. The advent of new technologies such as health social networks, and personal health records (PHR), have significant impact on the patient-centered care. The aim of this article is to analyze and provide a set of features and requirements needed by the users of health social network serving as a PHR (Personal Health Record) system. The combination of capabilities offered by PHRs and social networks providing better delivery of patient-centered care. Methods: In this paper, after a brief study of capabilities and features of existing health social networks and based on a comparative study, a set of requirements which are necessary to create a comprehensive health social network as a PHR system are proposed. Identification of such a systems stakeholders and users e.g. healthcare professionals, patients, and healthcare organizations is important for categorizing the requirements. Also, classifying relatively vast range of existing systems is needed to have a better analyze and design. Results: The proposed health social network can be used by different user groups in healthcare e.g. healthcare professionals, patients, and healthcare organizations. According to the each user group’s requirements, it provides separate facilities for them. The users of this integrated health social network can optionally share some of their information with other users in their group or with users in the other groups and interact with them. Studies show that the proposal requirements and capabilities for health social network not only cover the capabilities of similar systems but also satisfactory provide the requirements of a PHR system to deliver the patient-centered care. Conclusion: The proposed set of requirements are qualitatively compared with the other similar systems. Using the proposed health social network that provides PHR capabilities for its users will have an irrefutable impact on quality and efficiency of patient-centered care, and play an important role in improving the health of society.