Electronic Health Record

Electronic Health Record
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Electronic Health Record
Electronic Health Record is an evolving concept where an individual’s health information are captured in a digital format and recorded in an electronic data base. With the ongoing trends where every sector in the economy are embracing information technology to efficiently and economically handle the data handling issue, the medical and health sectors are not left out.
It should not come as a surprise to anyone that at this digital age several applications for handling and disseminating medical record of a patient. The records that are in digital format can now be accessed and shared among a number of directly networked health care providers via network providers or also on linked through the World Wide Web (Kluge, 2001). These records can include any form of information that a healthcare provider may need before treating a patient. The information captured may include; medical history, medication given, immunization status of the patient or even laboratory tests results among many others. This therefore means that any information that a health provider may need about a patient is here. Patients keep on changing their health care providers partly because of factors like cost or quality of service. There are other instances where they may change their providers because they (patients) have relocated elsewhere or the health provider has moved (Karin, 2004). In such a case, health records of a particular patient may be lost or misplaced making it very difficult to trace or retrieve. Some health facilities have tried to manage their data well but to achieve this, though a lot of cost has been incurred in getting the right number of manpower to do that.
Unlike in paper records, these forms of medical records are safe from tear which means that they can be in use for so long. These records have the ability to be edited, used as well as being viewed by many entities something that was a challenge with other form of record management (Kluge, 2001). In some cases, patients may be required to produce their medical records when they visit hospitals and most of the times they do not have it either it was not given to them by their previous care provider or the insurance agency or they lost it. With the introduction of Electronic Health Records, no physical records will be moving from one clinic or hospital to another because the same information will be available remotely (Kluge, 2001).
It is a concern that paper based records is still by far a common means used by many doctors to store their patients’ information. Apparently, the storage of these records and films can be an expensive activity not as simple as the doctors would like to imagine.
According to (Kluge, 2001), the Guide to Health Informatics (second edition) Arnold, London October 2003, there are benefits associated with introduction of Electronic Health Records. The introduction of this new technology will wipe away the problem of dealing with illegible, inaccurate, incomplete and sometime hard to find medical data. Upon implementation of the Electronic Health Records in a medical facility, there will be potential of fully automating the workflow in the facility initially...