Informatics and Health Services

Personal electronic health records are seen as a key component to improved health care for patients, empowering motivated patients by giving them access to their own records resulting in increased self-care, shared decision making, and better clinical outcomes. Benefits through electronic record keeping would also accrue to health care providers through the availability and retrievability of data, reduced duplication of medical tests, more effective physician diagnosis and treatment, reduced incidence of prescription errors, and flagging inappropriate drug combinations. Utilizing information technology could also moderate the cost of health care services. Electronic health records would also improve clinical research through access to a large database of patient electronic records for research and determining best practices. Although potential benefits are considerable, many challenges to implementation must be addressed and resolved before this potential of improved health care provision and cost efficiency can be realized.