Electronic Medical Record (EMR): Overview

An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is defined as:

"a type of clinical information system, which is dedicated to collecting, storing, manipulating, and making available clinical information important to the delivery of patient care. Such systems may be limited in their scope to a single area of clinical information (e.g., dedicated to laboratory data), or they may be comprehensive and cover virtually every facet of clinical information pertinent to patient care (e.g., computer-based patient record systems)."

Paper based medical records (as of now) are the most common type of medical records. Hospitals around the U.S are slowly transitioning to the use of EMR's, however, the cost of EMR's is far higher than traditional paper based records and many facilities are finding change and the low cost of paper based records hard to part with. 


In the U.S. most states require records to be saved for a minimum of seven years. In some instances paper based records are stored in different locations; retrieving the patients records can be time consuming and complicated, whereas the process can be simplified with EMR's. 
One study estimates EMR's improve overall efficiency by 6% per year, however, the increased portability and accessibility of EMR's may also increase the ease with which they can be accessed and stolen by unauthorized persons. This blog with discuss the pros and cons of electronic medical records (EMR) and discuss whether medical facilities should switch from the standard paper based medical records to electronic medical records.