Personal health record vs patient portal: what is the difference?
Updated June 2026
A patient portal (such as MyChart) is run by one health system and shows only that system's records; a personal health record is yours and holds records from every provider, lab, and country. Most people use both.
A patient portal, such as MyChart, is run by one health system and shows only that system's records. A personal health record, or PHR, is yours: it holds records from every provider, lab, and country in one place you control. They are not rivals; most people use a portal for each provider and a PHR for the whole picture. Cellar is a PHR that goes further than storage: it reads the documents you add and organizes them into one searchable, source-linked timeline.
Not for: A personal health record is not the system of record for your care and does not message your care team or book appointments; your provider's portal does that.
What a patient portal is
A patient portal is the window a health system gives you into the records it holds: results, visit notes, and messaging for the providers who use that system. It is the right place to talk to your care team and see that provider's results.
What it cannot do is show the records from every other provider you have seen, because it only knows about its own system.
What a personal health record is
A personal health record is yours, not a provider's. You add records from any source, so the whole history lives in one place you control and can take with you.
Cellar is a PHR that reads the documents themselves, building a timeline with trends and citations, and lets you share a read-only summary with any clinician.
Common questions
Is MyChart a personal health record?
MyChart is a tethered patient portal: it shows the records of the health systems that run it, not a copy you own across all of your providers.
Do I still need my patient portal?
Yes. Use each provider's portal for messaging, booking, and that provider's results. A personal health record holds the complete, portable picture.
Can a personal health record hold records from multiple hospitals?
Yes. That is the point of one: it holds records from every provider, lab, and country in one place you control.
Bring your records into one place
Cellar reads your labs, scans, and visit notes into one private, source-linked timeline you can search and share with any doctor. Encrypted, and never used to train AI.
Start your record$200 a year with a 14-day free trial. Viewing your records is never paywalled.