An electronic health record (EHR) is a longitudinal record of a patient’s medical history, diagnosis’, prescriptions, imaging, etc, that is linked with clinics, hospitals, and various other health facilities. The purpose is for a patient to be able to walk into a practice, and upon entering their information into their independent system, have all relevant health data for that patient from any encounters they’ve had historically at other facilities be made available (Gagnon et al., p. 2, 2009). It is different from personal health records (PHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), and various other systems, but we’ll go over that in one of the following modules.
There are a few important features that define an EHR.
- It contains a digitally accessible longitudinal record of patient information.
- That information can be accessed and updated from a network of different practices.
- The information is formatted to be interoperable, readable and usable by a variety of different systems.
Watch the following video regarding EHRs
Forum Activity
In order to test your knowledge and understanding of the previous material, as well as to help other learners who may not have understood all the topics, complete the following activities.
Activity 1
Answer the following questions in the forum:
- What other ways could EHRs be beneficial to society?
- Have you experienced an instance where an EHR would have been useful?
- What improvements could be made to the concept of EHRs?
Activity 2
After reading and hearing about EHRs, post any questions you have in the forum, and feel free to share any experience you may have regarding EHRs in your life.
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