A trade association representing health insurance companies and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association announced yesterday that they are developing a model for electronic personal health records that could be used by the 200 million people they cover.

The Blue Cross organizations and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) — a trade association representing health insurers — have developed a private, Web-based personal health record (PHR) that will be maintained by the insurer that processes a patient’s claims and administrative information, according to a statement. The PHRs, which have been designed to be portable so a person can take health data when changing health insurers, will include information such as patient demographics, treatment history, medications, drug allergies and immunizations.