ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS IN INDIA

Electronic health records are symbolic to the human advancement in the medical milieu and the digital world. Storage of medical health records electronically provides a comprehensive compilation of a patient’s medical history, beyond the traditional paper chart system. It enables care community across health care organizations to generate inputs for the patient’s treatment. EMRs also allow a patient’s medical transcripts to share amongst care providers. They are a better and futuristic version of the traditional paper-chart record system that is prevalent in most hospitals and doctors’ clinics even today. EMRs are a step ahead of paper records as they are an intelligent operating system on their own and are not stagnant like the latter. Once information is fed into an EMR, it does not lay dormant. The EMR is constantly acting on the data stored in it : it tracks the patient’s progress, keeps a vigil on further appointments of the patients if and when needed, and thus improves the overall quality of services that the health care organization provides. EMR can be seen as a physician’s assistant in care giving- reducing their workload and chipping in with valuable inputs.

Most importantly, EMR make health care a team effort by actively involving doctors, patients and even their families in the course of treatment. By making data digital sharing gets extremely convenient and speedy, EMR eliminates the danger of delaying treatment. Doctors no longer have to wait days for reports and then meet out a diagnosis. With EMR, they have the desired reports on their fingertips and can take the next step without delays that may prove to be fatal to the patient.

Electronic Health Records in India can thus be the game changer in the field of health care. As time passes, they are set to become the bedrock for quality improvement and timely deliverance of treatment. Gradually, the number of lives saved will increase and the time invested in saving them will decrease.

Platforms like MEDICOSA offers Patient Management System, which enables patient appointments online and billing & patients’ history access. Efficiency in clinical process is further improved after adoption of practice electronic medical records system using template based e-prescription. MEDICOSA enables interfaces to patient referral and follow-ups.

So, what seems to be the deterrent in this amazing process? The answer is that India has not yet completely adopted this system. In super-deluxe hospitals with state of the art technology, the EMR system is no big deal. The affluent sections of society are used to this standard of health care. What is needed at the present moment is the penetration of this high-quality, efficient and life-saving system into the middle and lower sections of society that are not so economically privileged. Patients at the grassroots may not even have heard of EHRs and may find the entire concept a little unnerving. For this, the government as well as the civil society need to come together and take a two pronged approach : first, introduce slowly but surely the system of the EHR, educating the masses in its use and benefits, and then take adequate measures to set up the required infrastructure for its development and deeper penetration into society.

A society with such a massive imbalance, where the scales are forever tipping in favour of the economically sound classes, the government, civil society and health care industry need to come together to push back up the end of the underprivileged.  - By Sukanya

Author Bio:

MEDICOSA is a networked patient care ecosystem on cloud to enable medical fraternity for offering integrated healthcare services to their patients. For more information about Electronic Health Records India please visit MEDICOSA.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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