Healthcare organisations cannot be lagging behind when every arena of life is dominated by electronic systems. As technology advances, healthcare is progressing towards an online digital platform for all its needs. In the mid 1960’s, Larry Weed mooted the idea of clinical data management. This paved the way for Hospital Information Systems as an integral part of the healthcare industry. As internet became popular in the 1990s, it saw the emergence of EHR as an integral part of patient care.
Computerization has become critical in order to manage the enormous volume of data that medical practices, clinics, and hospitals create and data storage for each patient has become the norm. However it is also important that medical records should focus on the total health of the patient and not merely remain as some random obscure clinical data collected in a particular clinic/hospital setup. It must encompass a broader view on patient care so that the information is shared across healthcare organizations providing physicians a complete look at patients ‘medical history in totality. Therefore in modern times there is simply no escaping the fact that our health records must be recorded in a space where we can access it whenever needed in spite of privacy and security concerns. Rules and regulations surrounding confidentially of medical records are evolving to ensure a sense of ease and comfort for the user. As these systems are relatively new we can expect a few hiccups and we may expect that the loopholes will get plugged as we proceed on this route. Latest software have the added ability to use voice and speech recognition so that information can be entered even faster making EHR more attractive to even the most reluctant users. Prudence dictates that one must evaluate the pros and cons but switching over from a paper-based solution to EHR seems inevitable both from patient and physician point of view.