Electronic health records — a need of time
When did you consult a doctor last time? Can you remember the date, medications and investigation reports? Is it handy to find out? Think about another situation: you are in a doctor's chamber and discovered that you do not have previous prescriptions and investigation reports in your file. Would that visit be worthwhile? You might end up your doctor's visit incomplete or need to reschedule your visit wasting valuable time and money.
Health information is no longer a portable stuff. These valuable documents and information can be stored in a secured place electronically. Only your authorised persons can see it from the electronic storage site. Patients' electronic records are sensitive and need extra care to store. This system is called Electronic Health Record (EHR) and when it is done for a single institution which does not need any data sharing it is called Electronic Medical Record (EMR).
The Electronic Health Record (EHR) includes patient demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunisations, laboratory data and radiology reports. The EHR automates and streamlines the clinician's workflow. The EHR has the ability to generate a complete record of a clinical patient encounter — as well as supporting other care-related activities directly or indirectly via interface — including evidence-based decision support, quality management, and outcomes reporting.
EHR has lots of tangible benefits and can overcome existing problems of health care systems. Apart from treatment benefits, it has the huge potentials to add new features in health research and system improvement. The efficiency of the system can be improved by many folds with existing number of work forces.
There are three parties involved in health care service delivery — health professionals, patients and facility provider (policymakers) e.g. hospitals, clinics or medical practitioners. With the implementation of EHR, doctors would not have to carry or hold papers in a big record room along with the staff to manage it. There is other risks associated with holding papers like fire, worms etc. The records would be able in just a finger click on computer screen. There would be lots of patient's medical information in chronological orders. Some results can be tabulated in graphical format.
Doctor can decide treatment plan on the basis of the report. Of course, the need of additional tests cannot be ignored which would also to be available on the computer screen if it done and entered. Quick availability of medical reports and information would give doctor more room to think treatment plan. The administrative hassles would be reduced to a level where physicians would have time to concentrate on actual clinical works.
Patients would have the chance to see the all the clinical information from his or her computer at work or home. The system can also set a reminder for follow up doctor visit, investigation appointment etc. Patients actually get all information about his/her medical condition in just a finger click. This is the best health tool for any person suffering from mild to moderate to severe form of chronic diseases e.g. diabetes, hypertension, heart ailments etc. This is also the best tool for those who really want to be healthy and want to keep picture on the computer screen.
On the other hand, physicians would be registered free of cost too. They would be able to patients records free of cost as well. To make it interactive with clinical data e.g. e-prescription, investigation etc. would be on fee basis. The cost would be reasonable.
Cost of EHR development and maintenance is only a fraction of entire health system cost. But the benefit is multifarious. It will not add any extra cost on patients unless extraordinary services are required. It will not be very expensive for the doctors either. The patients' pool in the system would generate revenue as it happened in Google or Facebook.
Ashoke Roy is a Health Informatics professional working for Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). E-mail: ashoke.k.roy@gmail.com
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