Electronic Medical Records EMR - A Step Forward In Medicine!

Following the steps of finance, transport and manufacturing sectors, healthcare systems too are gradually opting for electronic storage of records. But still the use of Electronic Medical Records varies from country to country and from specialty to specialty and in most cases it’s limited to local systems designed for local use. Besides, wherever the EMR systems have been implemented it's done mainly for the administrative use rather than clinical purposes. Electronic medical record system plays the pivotal role in any computerized health information system. In order to maintain the routine of clinical workflow implementation of modern technologies like decision support systems becomes indispensable but the implementation of this system is not possible without Electronic medical records.

The constant failure of the traditional record systems to produce safe, high quality, efficient and cost effective healthcare has called for the introduction of computerization of records with EMR at the centre. Most of the countries are now planning to implement the EMR system within the next ten years. A paperless, multi-provider, multi-discipline, interoperable computerized medical record which has been the dream of many researchers, healthcare professionals, administrators and politicians for the last to decade, is gradually taking shape.

The documents of records are mainly stored in temporary files and can be retrieved even when they are deleted or updated. This is done through Electronic Document Discovery EDD and is mainly used in civil and criminal litigations in order to get useful evidence. Its an arduous task as its difficult to collect, sort, categorize and store the sheer volume of data that's normally present in the electronic form. Only computer forensic experts can carry out electronic document discovery using electronic discovery software. Another tool that comes handy in recording documents is the Logical document determination. This process eliminates inadequacies and imprecision that's normally associated with the document preparation process. It reasonably differentiates documents from one another and classifies attachment connections among documents.

EMR system has proved to be effective in replacing paper-based records which are at times incomplete, fragmented, and hard to read. Being automatic and structured it streamlines the clinical workflow and also supports the medical education. Besides, maintaining a data and record trail helps in ready analysis for medical audit, research and quality assurance. But there are still some technical and financial issues that stay as constrains to the full fledged implementation of Electronic medical record system till today.