Emr Vs Epr Essay

According to Karim (2008), different terms are used in the literature to explain electronic patient’s healthcare data such as Electronic Health Records (EHR), Electronic Patient Record (EPR), Electronic Medical Record (EMR), Computerized Patient Record (CPR), and Computerized Medical Record (CMR). These names are given from time to time in different nations and in different healthcare environments. Abdul (2008) argues that EHR is different from an EPR/EMR that is longitudinal and not site specific, in short EHR is patient centric while EPR/EMR are provider centric.An electronic health record defined by Murphy (1999) as any information relating to the past, present or future physical health of an patient existing in an electronic system, which is used to capture, transmit, receive, store, retrieve, and manipulate data for the main purpose of providing healthcare and health-related services. EPR/EMR can be defined as the record of the periodic care provided mainly by one institution, as this will relate to healthcare provided to a patient by an acute hospital.Other healthcare providers like mental health NHS Trust (RCGP, 1998) may also hold electronic Patient/Medical Record. The schematic representation of EMR/EPR is given in figure (1). The database of EPR consists of registration of patient, billing information, clinician’s diagnosis, laboratory information such as x-ray, pathology, blood results, etc. The pharmacy information consists of information about medicines, supply of medicines, stock monitoring of drugs etc.These systems are interconnected with the database and interoperable, which is easy to access for physicians, reduces cost, improves healthcare considerably. Figure (1) Schematic representation model of EMR (Abdul, 2008) Hannan (1999) describes EPR as an essential tool for collecting and integrating medical information in order to improve clinical decision-making and Hassey (2001) describes it as general practice records containing data on an individual with a list of entries about individual’s medical health.