Improving Patient Care Through Medical Records Automation

Technological innovation is a key driving force that continues to disrupt businesses and improve everyday lives. With the pervasive nature of technology, it is not a surprise when it constantly overhauls industries other than the more noticeable early adopters such as retail and automotive. The rise of big data, coupled with the right innovative solutions, finally pushed the healthcare industry—considered a laggard when it comes to digital adoption—into its digital, data-driven age.

A relatively new and rapidly developing commercial sector worldwide, Health Information Technology is defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce as the “use of a suite of products and services designed to improve and coordinate patient care, address growing health costs, and confront the long-term burden of disease through the use of technology.” It includes medical software such as electronic medical records (EMR), electronic health records (EHR) and clinical decision software, among others.

EHR includes important clinical data such as demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data, and radiology reports. According to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medical Services, EHR “automates access to information and has the potential to streamline the clinician's workflow.” It can also support evidence-based decision support, quality management, and outcomes reporting, and improve overall patient care. Benefits of using EHR include:

• Minimizing medical errors through the accuracy and clarity of medical records;
• Making health information readily available which reduces duplication of tests and delays in treatment, and enables patients to make well-informed decisions; and
• Improving overall healthcare by strengthening the relationship between patients and clinicians, as well as health and social care systems.

The potentials of EHR reflect the positive outlook on the industry. In a recent ReportLinker report, the global EHR market is poised to grow at around 6.1 percent over the next decade to reach approximately $36.3 million by 2025. Some of the trends contributing to this growth include increasing demand for patient access to personal health information, adopting of health information technology by physicians, and rising technological advancements in EHR.

As part of the overall digital connected health, the market for EHR and EMR, together with telehealth, mobile health, wearables, and social media is expected to increase from $60.8 billion in 2013 to $233.3 billion in 2020, according to Deloitte.

Further, population health is anticipated to drive the demand for integrated electronic patient records across many different health and social care systems, the same Deloitte report noted. In fact, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey revealed that 83 percent of patients are willing to share their medical records with a health system to aid diagnosing and treating themselves, while 73 percent are willing to share to aid others.

Epic Systems, identified as a company to watch for by the MIT Technology Review in its 2014 business report, makes software healthcare organizations and hospitals use to manage electronic records. It hosts more than 100 million patients’ records which are accessible to companies using Epic’s health information exchange, Care Everywhere, and its EHR is one of the most widely-used systems, adopted by some of the largest hospitals.

Because of issues on interoperability, it is important for health institutions planning to adopt innovative software to ensure that it supports Epic, among other innovative solutions available in the market. Some of the services that hospitals can explore to support their EHR initiatives and enhance data-driven healthcare include:

• Application Services such as EMR adoption support, EMR optimization, meaningful assistance platform, and Core Health Technologies HL7 Interface;
• Technology services such as systems security and compliance, network management, network infrastructure installation, bed tracking management automation, and project management;
• Client Services such as service help desk, hospital service desk benchmarks, health technology and administration; and
• Staff augmentation which includes day-to-day IT staff support and clinical service desk.

It is critical to embrace technology now, more than ever. EHR and EMR are just two of the many recent healthcare-related advancements today. As a transforming agent, technology has become a must-have tool. With it, the healthcare industry can transform patient-clinician engagements, empower consumers to make informed decisions, and improve worldwide health outcomes in the long term, for the benefit of all.