Final answer:
True, Personal Health Records can monitor drug interactions and usages. They serve to alert patients to potential harmful interactions and ensure prescription adherence. Additionally, the sharing of these digital records among healthcare providers is aimed at improving healthcare quality and efficiency.
Step-by-step explanation:
Personal Health Records (PHRs) are indeed capable of monitoring drug interactions and usages. This means they can track the medications a patient is taking and alert them to potential drug interactions, which can prevent adverse reactions. PHRs can also monitor drug usage to ensure patients are taking medications correctly and adhering to their prescriptions, reducing the risk of medication-related complications.
For example, many modern PHRs are equipped with features that can cross-reference a patient's medications and flag any known interactions. With advancements in pharmacogenomics, PHRs can assist in understanding how a person's genetic makeup may affect their response to drugs, and how susceptibility to diseases may influence medication choice and dosage. The field of pharmacogenomics aims to develop personalized medication strategies that can, for example, offer counter-acting drugs to minimize the effects of drugs like Coumadin when necessary.
The sharing of digital records among healthcare providers is a strategy to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare in the U.S. Ensuring the privacy of electronic health records is paramount in this process. Moreover, continual evaluation of drugs through pharmacovigilance systems is essential, as it helps to monitor the safety of a drug when used by a large population over a long period of time.