Electronic Health Records
Electronic Health Records (EHR) are a digitized form of a health record, used in health systems to collect, store, edit, and transfer patient information. EHRs provide a universal location of all information and history of a patient regardless of region or facility. EHRs are owned by the patient and allow patients to access and edit his or her information. In the coming years, healthcare systems hope to overtake or work in addition to its paper counterpart by providing a universal location for “virtually every facet of clinical information pertinent to patient care.”
EHRs should not be confused with Electronic Medical Records (EMR), which are a computerized record from a single facility. They are not universally shared and may not allow the patient access to his or her information. However, the EHR relies heavily on EMRs in order to attain patient information and must seek permission from the healthcare facilities.
History
Electronic Health Records came from the development of Patient Care Records (PCRs). PCRs only share records within a single facility, whereas EHRs share records within, as well as between different facilities. The development of PCRs began in the 1960s under the John F. Kennedy presidency. The Lockheed Corporation received a large amount of government grant money for the NASA space program at the beginning of the sixties. The money was to be used for space technology under the stipulation that it be extended it to the common good of society. Lockheed had the idea to develop a computer program that managed patient care[1]. Lockheed presented their idea to El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Ca in 1968 who agreed to pursue the project. Lockheed industrial engineers spent the next two to three years analyzing the patient data flow in the hospital in order to understand how to build an effective infrastructure for the patient care application. El Camino Hospital began using the program in 1973 on IBM computers. Similar programs began to spread to other hospitals during the 1970s. Some of these projects included IFAS and Medpeo, PCS/ADS, and SMS. These PCR programs were very limited. They were able to send orders and share and gather results. During the 1980s other companies began to develop additional PCR systems, but many of them went out of business. By the end of the decade the Lockheed program was the only functioning system. Computer network technology emerged and computing costs started to decline in the 1990s, which facilitated the expansion and further development of CPR systems.
Ethical Issues
Advancements
References
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u83kt1k4142k6550/
