EHR’s: We’re on the right track, but it is going to take a while

Electronic health records (EHR’s) are of obvious benefit to the long term plan for reducing costs and improving delivery of healthcare services worldwide.  To achieve the ultimate end result of a healthcare record system that will facilitate communication between providers, allow for quick entry of data, and that will be provided on a large enough scale to impact the healthcare industry as a whole is going to still take some time however.

Currently, EHR consumers (hospitals, medical practices, physical therapy clinics, and dental offices) benefit from significant competition within the EHR market which has been effective in bringing the price of such systems down over recent years.  This is of obvious benefit, however the market is so ripe for competition that the lack of unified standards that allows for communication between systems has posed implication to practices that have made leap into EHR’s, but whose systems don’t necessarily communicate well with other providers in their community.

This article from Ars Technica refers to this issue as illegible handwriting in the digital age, and comments on some of the main players involved with bringing forward the standards necessary to make EHR a safe, effective, and cost-efficient tool for private practices and hospitals in the United States.

Doctors’ poor handwriting might be a cliché, but being able to accurately read medical records can often be a matter of life and death. The ubiquity of the personal computer has allowed the clinic to enter the digital age, and given that computers excel at managing information, the development of electronic health records (EHR) has been a no-brainer. Despite this, EHR adoption in the US and elsewhere has been slower than some might like, and at least one presidential candidate has made their widespread adoption a healthcare policy platform plank, promising widespread savings through increased efficiency.

Unlike other software markets, where a single player controls the market (such as Microsoft with Office), or where there are but a few solutions, the EHR field is one of byzantine complexity. There are dozens of different software packages and competing products. In this article, we’ll look at the state of the EHR field, along with some of the benefits and problems associated with their use.