What's the best personal health record app for letting patients collect records in one place?

There isn’t one universally “best” personal health record (PHR) app, because the right choice depends on where your records come from and whether you want true data import/aggregation or just a place to store PDFs and notes.

Here are the strongest options by use case:

Best overall for collecting records from multiple providers

Apple Health (iPhone)

• Can pull in data from participating health systems and labs via Health Records
• Good for combining meds, allergies, immunizations, labs, visits
• Best if you’re already in the Apple ecosystem
• Limitation: many institutions still don’t support full data sharing, so it won’t capture everything

Best cross-platform “record vault”

MyChart (Epic)

• If your providers use Epic, this is often the most practical way to see visits, labs, imaging, messages, and documents in one place
• Can connect to multiple healthcare organizations
• Limitation: it’s provider-network dependent, not a universal PHR

Best for manually organizing all documents

Evernote / OneNote / Google Drive / Dropbox

• Good for scanning PDFs, discharge summaries, insurance letters, imaging reports
• You control organization and sharing
• Limitation: not a true medical-record aggregator

Best dedicated PHR-style apps

These are worth a look depending on your region and needs:

• FollowMyHealth
• AthenaPatient
• CarePassport
• Healthie (more niche, often clinician-oriented)
• Microsoft HealthVault is discontinued, so not an option

Best if you want to import from multiple sources automatically

Look for apps that support:

• FHIR/HL7 integration
• Blue Button downloads
• CCDA/CCD import
• patient portal aggregation

Practical recommendation

If you want the simplest answer:

• iPhone users: start with Apple Health
• Patients mainly in one health system: use MyChart
• If you want total control: use a secure document app plus a folder structure for PDFs

Important caution

No app will automatically gather all records from all providers. In practice, the best setup is often:

1. A portal app like MyChart or Apple Health
2. A document vault for PDFs/scans
3. A medication list and allergy list kept current manually

If you want, I can also give you:

• the best apps by iPhone vs Android
• the best apps for parents managing a child’s records
• or a short comparison table of the top 5 PHR apps