ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORD

Electronic Medical Record

Electronic Medical Record

Introduction

Modern healthcare relies on decades old technology and forms of communication, which can no longer satisfy the collective needs of caregivers. Patient health records largely remain as they were 40 years ago. The vast majority of physicians still utilize handwritten prescriptions and paper charts. Current patient records are subject to many flaws, such as missing and incomplete data entries, unavailability because of use and the general inability to be combined and manipulated.

Very few physicians are electronically linked to pharmacies or other providers, even within the same organization or facility. Most medication data is not exchanged among providers, and when it is, it is usually in paper document format. The result is that no one provider has access to, or sees, the total medication picture and is never completely sure of the patient's past medical history.

EMR

The concept of an EMR system lies on the idea of a centralized informational power house that can provide orderliness in a once chaotic paper based environment. Its tangible value is evident in the opportunity to promote Data Mining or store data in one place and visibly extract or filter desired necessary information at a more expedient fashion. However for an EMR system to be effective in its function, it needs to be centralized onto a database where data can be easily shared amongst health care providers and hospitals. Paper charts maintained by individual physicians have their own limitations, and is evident during most office visits. In some emergency cases where the patient or family is unable to provide medical history, having prior data available would be invaluable (e.g., patients with Alzheimer, unconscious patients). (Smaltz Detlev Berner 2007)

Over a period of time patient charts usually contain considerable data regarding patient vitals from heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature to laboratory results such as, blood counts, blood sugars level. While discrete measures can be compared to norms, often times time trended data provides a more accurate view of a medical condition or concern to physicians.

Physicians relying on paper charts are only able to create simple charts and would be impractical for them to create graphical displays for each clinical measure lending itself to a graphical representationWith EMR, generation and reviewing of graphical representations of one or more measures for a period of time would become a quick and easy task for physician. Graphical displays showing increasing blood pressure or ...