The healthcare industry is embracing the use of electronic health records (EHRs). It advances a new type of data management system that aims to improve on traditional paper-based ways. But will it?
An electronic health record (EHR) is an individual’s official health document accessible via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and shareable between multiple facilities and agencies.
Typically, an EHR includes contact information, allergies, family history, list of medications, information regarding previous surgeries and procedures, and other relevant patient information.
EHRs improve patient care in significant ways. For one, they can aid in diagnosing patient illnesses based on past history and the patients’ complete health information. EHRs can also help reduce medical errors and false positives. Records can also be updated to provide last known information to the provider at the point of care.
Lastly, EHRs can also improve overall public health by providing a bird’s-eye view of the overall health of an entire patient population. This lets providers identify risk factors that most impact the patients and proactively prepare for potential outbreaks or illnesses.
The long-standing debate of digital versus traditional data storage has expanded to every industry, and healthcare isn’t spared from it either. While most agree that EHRs offer more benefits in comparison with paper records, EHRs themselves are not without drawbacks. Below are some of the major differences between paper and electronic records.
Experts on the subject seem to believe that EHRs need to evolve a little more before being fully accepted and integrated by all healthcare institutions. Some changes include:
Despite these, we can still expect EHRs in the future to eventually have more in-depth content and provide a more layered representation of a person’s history. Over time, this will lead to better diagnosis of patients and more accurate prescription of medicine.
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