In the past, we used to take the health of our body for granted until a disease makes its appearance. When diseases occur, the focus would be on the agent (germ) that has attacked and invaded our previously healthy body. The task that the doctor faces was similar to that of a detective hunting down a culprit. Once the disease is identified, treatment will be aimed at attacking and destroying the culprit – the germ.

Now, this simplistic view of health and disease has given way to a different paradigm. Even in our youth, our bodies are constantly becoming unhealthy and with every passing year, various imbalances set in as part of the aging process and these give rise to symptoms. There are multiple chemical and physical parameters that combine together to make up a harmoniously functioning human body and it requires hard work and diligence to maintain health when faced with multiple destabilizing influences from diet, lifestyle, work and environment.

The imbalances that make up disease have to be constantly monitored and attempts should be constantly made to correct them and restore the balance of the healthy human body.

The essential parameters that we are able to measure that have a bearing on health include weight, waist circumference, blood sugar, lipid profile, liver transaminase enzymes, urea, creatinine, uric acid, electrolytes, thyroid related hormones, haemoglobin and blood counts.
To maintain health, it is important to have continuous knowledge of how close to disease we are in terms of these parameters and to take measures to bring them closer to healthy norms. This means we have to measure the imbalances that are there in the majority of us periodically and an up to date record should be maintained of all these parameters.

The attempts to restore the values to healthy norms must be aided by appropriate target values of each parameter and it is important that the awareness of the target values must be part of the general knowledge that everyone in society would be expected to acquire. Not only should there be awareness of the targets, but lifestyle and simple therapeutic measures involved in primary, preventive healthcare should also be part of our education.

The Personal Health Record offers a means to maintain a readily accessible repository of your health related information as well to inform of target values of each parameter. It paves the way for a process of healthcare that is based on continuous monitoring of all essential parameters and on maintaining each parameter within its target range.

Thus health assessment becomes not a matter of looking for the symptom-causing disease, but one of continuous surveillance of all essential parameters in an attempt to detect imbalances early so that corrective measures can be implemented before complications and irreversibility set in. This is what our organization is aiming to do with the help of the internet-based personal health records.