ELECTRONIC Medical Record (EMR) systems will play a big role in the future, even though it has yet to prove that it will solve inefficiencies in medical recordings, said a medical health expert from New Zealand.
“I believe that in the future, the EMR system will replace paper systems everywhere,” Dr Graham Chiu told The Brunei Times on the sidelines of the Second National Orthopaedic Symposium yesterday.
A statement from the Ministry of Health said that the use of EMR to supplement healthcare systems is becoming more relevant to their daily work, with the advent technology and increasing volume of paperwork produced by doctors.
Dr Chiu, a rheumatologist consultant from New Zealand, said that if a country wants to invest in the EMR, the first and foremost thing to do is develop an IT infrastructure.
“You need to have basic IT support systems and professional IT personnel who can help. You need to get your physicians to know how to use it too,” he said.
He also said that if local IT support is low, one may have to use a web-based system that would enable a browser.
“But the browser doesn’t really have a rich interface, so if you are in a more developed country, you may use what you can call a client server, so that clients can communicate through a more central server, rather than a browser interface,” he said.
He said also said that if countries want to compete on a worldwide level, there should be an IT infrastructure.
“The EMR is part of the IT infrastructure anyway, but it has to be part of your national development as a country,” he said.
Dr Chiu said that the EMR will be able to reduce inefficiencies in the duplication of testing, where it can be a situation that is far from cost-effective.
“For instance, I understand that if I can’t find results for a test, I have to order for it to be done again and it can be expensive and a waste of money,” he said.
He added: “Once it’s in the EMR, you don’t have to hunt around looking for medical records which are often missing so it does save a lot of time.”
Implementing new standards are also easy to come by in using the EMR, he said.
“If there is a nationwide alert that you have to treat such as the Influenza A (H1N1) virus in a particular way, then this could be disseminated through the records so that physicians can see the newly-implemented standards and act on them accordingly,” he said.
In the face of natural disasters, the EMR can also play a pivotal role in conjuring medical files that have been destroyed.
“During the US Katrina disaster, the water flooded the whole city destroying all medical records. If they had stored all the information in the EMR system which would then be backed up by the Internet, they wouldn’t have those problems,” he said.
Utilising the EMR in his daily work, he said that the system has worked for him and made him work better, but its usefulness has yet been proven.
For instance, hospital data may already be functioning at a high level, that adding another complicated system might not actually make much difference, he said.
“It will try to simplify, but it doesn’t work that way,” he said.
Other setbacks include needing a computer literate person to use the EMR because they cannot use it if they do not have the skills. “There is a high requirement for strong technical support. If you don’t have support, then the systems won’t work and you need back up.”
Security considerations also need to be considered as putting data into EMR can be open to people hacking into the database, he added.
Latest by The Brunei Times:
- Winner plans to market software to local artistes
- 18 youths detained in ‘Operasi Lepak'
- India's Independence Day flag hoisting on August 15
- TAP counters operating hours in Ramadhan
- Brunei swimmers compete to attend Dubai meet
