Question

Discuss the history of the concept of the adoption of EMRs by the health care industry: What are the various forces involved in mandates and regulations affecting the adoption of EMRs? What do you see as the advantages gained by adopting EMR and what are the disadvantages?

Answer 1

EMR refers to Electronic Medical Record.

History: The Regenstreif Institute developed the first EMR in 1972. It is an idea of recording the patient’s medical records in the electronic form rather than on paper.

This method did not emerge at full fledge at that time due to high costs and limitation of computers and internet in those days.

Electronic Medical Records consists of information related to:

• Registration of the patient
• Patient documentation
• Prescriptions
• Lab reports
• Imaging reports
• Clinical decision support
• Inter hospital communications

Major drivers for the adoption of EMR are:

• Health safety: With the help of EMR, the doctors can take better decisions as they have best clinical knowledge database from the EMR.
• Health costs: Physicians can diagnose the disease easily if they have a record of all the existing symptoms. EMR helps in this regard which in turn helps in saving lot of money for disease diagnosis in some cases.
• Changing society: The change in the life style of the people is a major driving force for the adoption of EMR. These days there is a lot of possibility of relocation, which leads to change in doctors. People also got used to mobile services instead of papers. All these made people adopt EMR.

Advantages of Electronic Medical Record:

• Easy access to patients
• Convenience
• Effectiveness
• Saving space
• Improved quality of care

Disadvantages of Electronic Medical Record:

• Security
• Inaccurate information might be entered by mistake
• Malpractice
• Privacy issues

Apart from these, doctors complain that EMRs’ are like one-size-fits-all. There is no differentiation in the EMRs’ for different diseases. This is one of the challenges faced by EMRs’ in the contemporary world.