PHR use "is not incredibly high, but it is growing," said Lygeia Ricciardi, senior policy advisor for consumer e-health at the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services. She cited a 2011 study from consulting firm Deloitte that found usage stands at 11 percent, a 3 percent increase from the 2008 survey.

Consumers interested in PHRs face compartmentalized offerings with enterprise IT vendors looking to unite the silos, said Liz Boehm, principal analyst, customer experience for health care and life sciences, at Forrester Research.

Entities that pay a person's health care claims, such as a health insurance provider, offer PHRs containing claim information, but lack clinical data like lab results, said Boehm. Doctors, using health care software from companies including GE and Epic Systems, can offer PHRs that include clinical data. These records prove "less useful," though, since they cannot link to a patient's pharmacy or another health care provider's system.

Microsoft's HealthVault PHR service, launched in 2007, attempts to bridge the gap between health care payer and provider systems, she said. HealthVault's objective is for doctors, pharmacies and other care providers to "feed their data into this record that is centered around the consumer."