There have been a number of technological advancements that was introduced around the world to simply a process which was already considered simple. A popular example is the use of electronic medical records or an EMR. So what is an EMR?

What is an EMR?

An EMR is a software developed to enhance or improve the daily processes of medical practices, such as those mostly seen in a hospital or in any other health care institutions. It is meant to replace the long use of paper-based records when gathering medical data from a patient who is still very common in many health care providers.

According to many experts, an EMR is much similar to EHR or the electronic health record, for a few differences. The EMR can be defined as the legal patient record created in hospitals and ambulatory environments that is the data source for the EHR.

Benefits Compared to Paper-Based Records

There are significant differences between the use of an EMR and the traditional use of paper-based records. One benefit of changing from paper-based records to EMR software is that it saves more in terms of storage spaces.

According to medical experts, most health care providers such as hospitals use storage facilities to store their patient’s records. And usually, these records are stored for 7 years. Compared to the use paper-based records, EMR usually use digital storages which take up lesser space and cost.

Another major advantage of using an EMR is that it can be easily transmitted from one health care institution, such as a hospital, to the other, which is unlike that of the use of paper-based records which would usually take a lot of time to transport, particularly if it came from another region.

But what made electronic medical records essential in today’s medical practices is that it improves the quality of health care that these institutions can offer.

Handwritten paper medical records can be associated with poor legibility, which can contribute to medical errors.Pre-printed forms, the standardization of abbreviations, and standards for penmanship were encouraged to improve reliability of paper medical records.

Electronic records help with the standardization of forms, terminology and abbreviations, and data input. Digitization of forms facilitates the collection of data for epidemiology and clinical studies.