The 2009 Federal Stimulus Package devotes $20 billion dollars to electron medical records and another $7.2 billion to broadband Internet access. The spending is unprecedented not only on scale, but also on breath of technology. There is $17.6 billion allocated for incentive payments to health-care providers who adopt electronic health records and $2 billion for coordinating information technology.
This financing is intended to move health care to a new level of quality as well as cost containment.
The healthcare industry exists to heal the human body when it becomes ill. But it needs assistance to overcome inefficient, manual, paper-based processes by automating methods utilizing collaboration, electronic forms, and enhanced patient care.
Automate information capture through electronic registration, health histories, consent forms, and disclosure forms could streamline the entry process. A nurse or administrator can verify health data extract data to electronic medical record (EMR) systems. Then trigger other processes such as billing or scheduling automatically. As a patient's medical record evolves over time, content can be consolidated into a single secure file.
An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is an electronic record of health-related information on an individual created by authorized staff within one health care organization.
An Electronic Health Record (HER) is an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards that is managed by authorized staff across more than one health care organization.
A Personal Health Record (PHR) is an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources.
The goal is to leverage industry standards and integrate them with enterprise documentation systems through EMR, HER and PHR.
Of the more than 800,000 clinicians in the US, only 17% have EHRs today. This leaves 664,000 who need EHRs. Over the next 5 years the early adopters will gain the full stimulus incentive amounts available in 2011-2012.
There are over 100 companies developing EHRs such as the market leaders are eClinicalWorks, Allscripts, NextGen, GE Centricity, and Meditech/LSS.
One of the most cost effect information technology upgrades for addressing the voluminous data intensive mega-file healthcare records is through parallel processing. We can expect to see tremendous innovation in this area.
