Today's approach to patient care and the medical record that directs and documents it is largely focused on identifying and treating the patient's disease. This has resulted in a sporadic, reactive healthcare system. Shifting medicine's focus to personalized strategic health planning will require a new approach to the patient 'work-up', a new relationship between the patient and the provider and a new medical record to support it. A prospective health record should be developed to enable personalized and preventative strategies, including assessment of health risks, evaluation of current health status, tracking of disease pathogenesis, prediction of disease events and long-term planning for maintaining wellness and limiting disease. The record should utilize emerging technologies to track predictive clinical risk factors, thereby enabling preventative responses and personalized medicine.
Keywords: biomarker; disease tracking; medical record; personalized health plan; personalized medicine; preventative medicine; prospective health care; risk assessment; risk assessment tools; strategic health planning.