What is EHR Technology?
The reliance on technology is increasing at a rapid rate. This term, as social scientists we have been exploring the topic of technology and its role in the Health field. An interesting topic that caught our eye was the use of EHR. Never heard of it? It stands for Electronic Health Record. The name speaks for itself, this interface can be used to keep track of every patient’s medical history.
Impact and Evolution
EHRs contain everything from past medications, treatment dates, vaccinations, diagnoses and even allergies. The machine itself contains pre-written functions for nurses to use when treating patients. It's safe to say that the usage of EHRs has transformed the world of healthcare and the efficiency of treating patients. Nurses can collaborate with other healthcare providers in terms of receiving feedback from external laboratories and specialists, to provide the best of care. The first real implementation of EHR goes way back in the 1960s by Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Initially EHRs were quite expensive thus were only used by government funded organizations. Now, this cutting-edge technology is used all around the world!
Now every innovation has its drawbacks. The main factor stopping people from fully converting to digital treatment relates to the high probability of inaccuracy. As mentioned before, a typical EHR system would contain pre-formed functions, this completely blocks any area of personalized suggestions that can be given by nurses. In a study done by Folio3, where up to 14,000 nurses were surveyed. The results showed, 69% of the group agreed the use of an EHR, along with being time consuming, has a high chance of being filled with errors. Although this is different for every hospital, as problems face depends on the overall integration and functionality of the system itself, it is still quite a common problem that is faced globally with these machines.
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“The current focus of medicine is much like the focus that an auto mechanic takes to repair a car. The diagnostic process isolates a broken part and repairs or replaces it.... Although this strategy has saved countless lives and reduced pain and suffering, it nevertheless treats the disease and not the patient,”
― Paul Cerrato, Reinventing Clinical Decision Support: Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Diagnostic Reasoning
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Benefits of EHR
This section focuses on the benefits of EHR in the healthcare sector. A list of benefits was summarized:
Improvement in the legibility of clinical notes.
Decision support for drug ordering, including allergy warnings and drug incompatibilities.
Reminders to prescribe drugs and administer vaccines.
Warnings for abnormal laboratory results.
Support for program monitoring, including reporting outcomes, budgets and supplies.
Support for clinical research.
Management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart failure
Not to mention this system cuts daily paper usage significantly. For years the only option was to use multiple storage rooms along with large external facilities to store continuous flow of medical data. An article by Wheel mentions, this technological transition can allow hospitals to develop more productive spaces while at the same time the chance for losing important documentation can be reduced.
Implementation of EHR in Developing Countries
EHR implementation in developing countries presents many benefits that can improve healthcare management and open these countries up to information and advancement of their healthcare.
Relevance : The implementation Technology will be connected to the core digital societies components.
Context : We have made huge connections between Health and Social which we will talk about in our upcoming research. Health will be purely based upon the EHR technology and its surrounding impacts. Social will be fully based upon the implementation upon developing countries and how a country may benefit from it.
Content : Technology and Data will be our primary focus when it comes to the content of our research. To what extent has the EHR technology evolved? What is the origin behind EHR technology? How reliable is the data within the EHR system? These are the main issues we're debating as part of our EHR technology research.
Concept : We are looking to Change which is relevant towards EHR technology. Electronic health records (EHRs) are frequently regarded as merely a replacement for paper records. However, enormous strides have been made in the field of healthcare, which has had a long and illustrious impact on people all over the world.
Maintenance Cost :One of the most frequently identified factors limiting EHR adoption is the cost of implementation. Research has shown that low adoption of EHR in developing countries such as the sub-Saharan African countries can be linked to high costs of implementation and maintenance due to hardware, software, training and support costs. Many hospitals and doctors in Sub-Saharan African countries were concerned about the large capital outlay for software and hardware installation, peripheral costs such as scanners, printers, paper, and ink, and recurring system costs.
Furthermore, the software used in healthcare establishments is very expensive, and the cost of implementation, excluding technical support and ongoing maintenance, was estimated. As a result, many hospitals did not purchase EHRs due to the high costs associated with doing so, even though they were advantageous in other ways; EHR deployment is not a top priority for them.
Digital Division : Another factor identified in the publications examined is a lack of computer literacy. Physicians mentioned a number of skill-related issues that they believe would make using an EHR difficult. This included, among other things, a lack of typing skills, a poor understanding of how to operate a computer, and a lack of motivation. Inability to type while speaking with patients, as well as knowledge of how to use the EHR system. Many people in developing countries (Sub-Saharan African countries) are unable to use computers due to a lack of computer literacy. Physicians and other important end users are not eager/willing to use an electronic health record (EHR), and as a result, EHR adoption in this region is low.
Lack of Electricity and Internet Outage : Many studies have identified a lack of consistent electrical supply as a major barrier to success. For example, they reported that they were unable to use EHR consistently for many months due to frequent power outages. It was also stated that many hospitals in this region do not have continuous access to electricity. In fact, many hospitals rely heavily on
the backup power source known as a "generator" to run their operations. All of this is due to infrastructure issues throughout the country and a lack of guaranteed internet access.
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