Since the beginning of this century, the view has developed that high quality health care can be delivered only when all the pertinent data about the health of a patient is available to the clinician. This viewpoint brings forth the notion of a lifelong health record. Various types of health records have emerged to serve the needs of healthcare providers and more recently, patients or consumers. The purpose of this paper is to present a set of characteristics or best practices for lifelong health records which are seen independently from implementation constraints such as technology and operational context. The characteristics, comprised by four core characteristics and nine dimensions, are synthesized from the characteristics of various types of health records used by healthcare providers and consumers. Examples are provided of evaluation measures that give an indication of compliance to the broadly stated characteristics of lifelong health records.