Mandl, KennethSimons, WilliamCrawford, William CRAbbett, Jonathan M2011-04-182007Mandl, Kenneth D., William W. Simons, William C. R. Crawford, and Jonathan M. Abbett. 2007. Indivo: A personally controlled health record for health information exchange and communication. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 7: 25.1472-6947http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4853421Background: Personally controlled health records (PCHRs), a subset of personal health records (PHRs), enable a patient to assemble, maintain and manage a secure copy of his or her medical data. Indivo (formerly PING) is an open source, open standards PCHR with an open application programming interface (API). Results: We describe how the PCHR platform can provide standard building blocks for networked PHR applications. Indivo allows the ready integration of diverse sources of medical data under a patient's control through the use of standards-based communication protocols and APIs for connecting PCHRs to existing and future health information systems. Conclusion: The strict and transparent personal control model is designed to encourage widespread participation by patients, healthcare providers and institutions, thus creating the ecosystem for development of innovative, consumer-focused healthcare applications.en-USJournal Article2011-04-1810.1186/1472-6947-7-25