Patient portal

Why it matters

A portal extends the record to the person it describes. MedlinePlus lists common portal functions, including booking non urgent appointments, requesting referrals and prescription refills, completing forms and asking questions through secure messaging, and notes that patients may also view test results, visit summaries and their medical history [1]. For a hospital this reduces telephone and counter traffic; for patients it means fewer trips to collect paperwork.

Key points

• A portal is tethered to the provider's record, unlike a personal health record that the individual manages and controls [2].
• The portal is a public entry point to clinical data, so sign in should be protected with multifactor authentication [3].
• What patients see, and when, should follow clinical policy, for example on releasing sensitive results.
• Portal content should come from the live record so that patients and clinicians see the same information.

In Moana

The MOANA Patient Portal and MOANA Mobile give patients access to their own information in the Moana EHR, protected by role based access and recorded in the audit log.

Sources

1. Patient portals: an online tool for your health, MedlinePlus, US National Library of Medicine, accessed 2026
2. Health informatics: personal health records, definition, scope and context (ISO/TR 14292), International Organization for Standardization, 2012
3. Multifactor authentication, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, 2024