Abstract

Governments around the world are actively promoting citizens electronic access to their health data as one of a number of ways to respond to the challenges of health care delivery in the 21st century. While numerous approaches have been utilized it is evident from cross-country comparisons that there are different conceptualizations of: both the expected and desired roles for citizens in the management of their own health; the benefits that will be delivered by citizen access and how these benefits should be measured and benchmarked over-time. This paper presents comparative analyses of the methods by which citizens are provided with access to their own health data across 11 countries. The paper aims to stimulate debate on electronic citizen access to health data and the challenges of measuring benefit as well as reflection on capacity of different citizens to engage with e-health.