Up to 75 percent of the nation's healthcare spending goes to treating individuals with chronic diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts have claimed that greater patient engagement may help tame runaway costs, but reforms may be needed to encourage this. Electronic health records may play an important role in these necessary changes.

Commentator Frank Moss, the former director of MIT's Media Lab, recently wrote in the New York Times that he believes the country is on the verge of a consumer health revolution in which patients will have greater access to information that enables them to care for themselves. This reform is being driven by great strides in health information technology and EHRs.

"Imagine a far more extreme transformation, in which advances in information technology, biology and engineering allow us to move much of healthcare out of hospitals, clinics and doctors' offices, and into our everyday lives," Moss wrote.

He cited advancements in wireless monitoring systems, mobile phone applications and telehealth technology as some of the primary instigators of this change.

Still, Moss said that regulatory authorities would have to be mindful of the importance of making sure that all these technologies are capable of communicating with each other.