Electronic Medical Record Systems – Understanding the Need behind Their Development

One of the biggest ways in which the medical industry has received the right platform and means to grow and advance its operations is with the rapid development seen in technology. There are scientists and companies whose sole aim is to find and create new, innovative and better ways in which doctors and other medical professionals can do their jobs. Providing high quality patient healthcare services is the aim of any hospital or medical facility. One aspect of this objective is to ensure that all the medical records and history of the patient is readily available at the disposal of the doctors so that they are able to prescribe the right and most effective treatments. This is where another technological innovation comes in and makes the task easy – electronic medical record systems.

In this article we will try and take a detailed look at what these systems are all about.

Electronic medical record systems also called electronic patient records or computerized patient records that are collections of patients' medical history over a period of time within an institution. Earlier the maintenance of this data was a manual task which was often prone to error, inaccuracies, redundancies and incompleteness. There were even times where healthcare institutions depended upon the patients to maintain their own health records and bring them when they came for treatment. This was a huge mistake as you really cannot expect patients, people with no medical training, to understand the relevance and importance of maintaining accurate records. Institutions that did manage this task themselves had to employ a horde of employees and professionals to manage this function. Complications arose when the patient was transferred to another hospital or maybe another department in the same hospital. Manual data recording and physical patient files were very difficult to access. This was the condition that was generally prevalent prior to the introduction of EMR systems.

You might question exactly how relevant is this task for the treatment of patients. This data is of immense importance as it ensures that doctors prescribing treatment and medication are well aware of the patient histories, any allergies they are prone to, prior treatments they have taken and other health conditions that might be present in their bodies which are not immediately apparent. Health records include demographics, past medical records, vital signs, medications, immunizations, progress reports, health problems, laboratory and radiology data. Imagine the situation where bulky files and folders were the first things that doctors had to skim through, just to understand what is going on with a patient’s body.

The introduction of electronic medical record systems changed the scenario drastically. They ensured that every scrap of information about a patient’s prior health issues is well preserved and readily accessible, transferable, searchable and easy to maintain. This removed any dependence on the patient to provide accurate medical histories and ensured that complete, authentic and relevant data is available to doctors at the right time. This technology has truly changed the face of modern medicine. Visit PracticeStudio.net to know more.

About The Author

Allison Chase is an expert in electronic medical records systems who also likes to write many interesting articles and blogs on the topic, educating people about this technology and talking extensively about the benefits of this service. She recommends PracticeStudio.net as the most trustworthy name in this business.