The Benefits And Drawbacks Of Electronic Medical Records In A Computerized Age
The idea behind electronic health records is to have a computer-based history of a patient's clinical and administrative details. This will include every document made by each doctor that was ever involved with the patient's medical history.
The big benefit of this computerization is that it is easy for a new doctor to pull a patient's history, even from one hospital to another. On the flipside is the ever-present possibility of invasion of privacy.
Different care providers in the medical community may have different protocols in treating some conditions, and these differences may not be able to reflect in a shared medical record.
The issue with all computerized systems is security. Software developers in the EMR industry are taking steps to improve security by adding features like username and password requirements. However, for the determined and experienced computer hacker, breaking a username and password combination is not too hard to do.
The newest security features to be added to computer systems are biometric identifiers. It almost sounds like science fiction, but it is becoming more and more common to use things like fingerprints, eye scans and voice prints in security systems.
The dream of the paperless work environment is a definite benefit of having an electronic medical records system. Administrative staff are freed up from spending time managing files and having to make copies of records and so on. The drawback is that now the doctors need some kind of portable device to access record when consulting with patients.
A benefit of electronic systems is data accuracy. In a well designed software system, many data entry fields will be checked for valid entries. With information being entered in a standardized way, the software can also be programmed to alert doctors about certain conditions for a patient, like allergies to drugs, drug interactions or medication errors. This kind of sophisticated software makes it possible for the pharmacy, doctor and nurse to interact in a whole new way.
The debate about electronic medical record system may continue, but it is an almost inevitable fact of life for the future of the medical community.
Related Tags: electronic medical records, emr
Evert DuToit is the publisher of the Alternative Energy Guide website where we discuss alternative energy sources such as Wind Power and others.
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