Imagine a world where everyone pays taxes, gives to charity, and proactively monitors their health. That would be great. There would be enough money for health care and research, and costs for both would be substantially lower, freeing up money for activities like education. A personal health record (PHR) that works in harmony with the electronic medical record (EMR) is the ideal union to facilitate a healthy population, but we are not there. To be honest, I don't foresee the PHR taking root, but for the sake of this article, I'll put my pessimism in the closet, hide the key, and eat my cake (I like key lime), as I walk into the land of utopia . An exploration of why PHRs are harmful to medical practices, the value to consumers, and how a PHR and EMR can interact to improve the quality of care received will be discussed. The road to change I have always considered healthcare workers, like doctors, as investigators. They systematically look for clues and gather facts, then match the data with intuition and past experiences. Consequently, the greater the accuracy of the data, the greater the chance that the patient will be diagnosed quickly and accurately. For people who want to speed up and help with the process, a PHR, which is a repository of an individual's personal health data, is a great place to start. According to Christensen, Grossman, and Hwang (2009), there are three paths a PHR can take to disrupt the current medical practice model. The first, agreement on standards, should occur before the new product emerges. In the case of PHRs this time has already passed. Next, the concept of virtualization, allows different systems to learn to speak the same technological language (Christ… at the center of the card… transformative tools for consumer-centric care. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 8 (1), 45.Madhavan, S., Sanders, A.E., Chou, W.Y.S., Shuster, A., Boone, K.W., Dente, M.A., ... & Hesse, B.W. (2011). patient. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40(5), S208-S216.Tang, PC, Ash, JS, Bates, DW, Overhage, JM, & Sands, DZ (2006), benefits and strategies for overcoming barriers to. adoption. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 13(2), 121-126.Tang, P. C. and Lee, T. H. (2009). Medicine, 360(13), 1276–1278:10.1056/NEJMp0810264Waegemann, C.P. (2003)., 1-4.