Communication and Information Tech

Communication and Information Technology Paper

occurring within this system have been in communication and technology. Before these changes, hospitals and health care facilities kept their medical records in an area the size of a library. Now, these same medical records can be housed within a single computer.

Health care communication technology is a way for providers to better manage and improve on how health care information is stored and transmitted to another provider or facility. The new technology that will allow providers to do this is EMR’s (Electronic Medical Records). Electronic Medical Records (EMR’s) is a form of patient record keeping without all the paper. The goal of this technology is to improve efficiency, management, reduction of paper and better access to patient care.

Electronic medical records serve as a solution for the need of quick access to patient health information. These EMRs contain an accurate account of a patient’s history along with doctor’s notes. Electronic medical records are also kept up-to-date as each encounter in entered as soon as the patient sees the provider. EMRs have only been in existence for a little over 20 years in Western health care systems. By 2001 only 17% of US physicians had implemented the EMRs into their systems (Open Clinical, 2010). Within the next ten years the USA will have built integrated computer-based national health care infrastructures based around the electronic medical records system.

Advantages & Disadvantages

There are some major advantages for using EMRs instead of paper-based medical records. One of the key advantages to using EMRs is the saving of space. Paper-based medical records take up a large amount of space which can be used for something else. Another benefit of using EMRs is that they are stored in one place; a computer. Paper-based records can be hard to read, hard to find and are sometimes incomplete. Maintaining an information trail is essential when...