Electronic Medical Records Systems and Health Care

Paper based record systems have been in use for hundreds of years in the medical and the healthcare industry. Paper based systems have been gradually replaced by electronic medical record systems and electronic healthcare systems. Electronic medical record systems and electronic healthcare systems go hand in hand as both of them more or less work on the same technology. Computerized information systems have made a deep penetration in the healthcare market as all the data now is digitally entered and stored on computers.

More and more countries are upgrading their traditional paper based systems to electronic healthcare systems because of a variety of reasons such as efficiency, less storage space, fantastic search features and savings in terms of overhead expenses. However electronic healthcare systems have not achieved the same degree of penetration as the finance, manufacturing and retail computerized systems. Deployment of these systems varies from country to country. However in developed countries penetration of electronic healthcare systems have a penetration rate of almost 90%. However the electronic medical systems have been used more for administrative purposes rather than clinical purposes.

Some of the developed countries in which electronic healthcare systems are used on a large scale are USA, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Denmark. These systems are networked and hence information is available to all those people on the network. The network maybe a LAN spanning several buildings or a WAN spanning several countries. Electronic healthcare systems are getting better and better day by day due to the increasing demands of the people in the way they function.

Electronic healthcare systems are pretty expensive to purchase at first but then there are not considerable costs for maintaining the system other than annual service charges depending on the maintenance contract. More and more organizations are going towards the digital world of electronic healthcare systems, based on the capabilities of electronic medical record systems.