Future of Electronic Medical Records: Experts Predict EMR Trends in 2022
With the advent of 2020, the world has seen some surprises. The COVID-19 arrival has shown how vital and valuable digital solutions are in solving the healthcare IT challenges. EHR and Electronic Medical Records Software have revolutionized the healthcare IT system with their process and techniques. But after 2020, automation has changed the picture.
The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software is the tool for a completely paperless process concerning the patients, which is stored in an electronic form. The EMR are more efficient than hard-copy patient charts as they eliminate human efforts with automated data capture techniques for improved workflow. The EMR market can stimulate growth to be worth $60.70 billion by the year 2026, indicating the growing requirement for improved patient care and technological advancements.
Before delving into the upcoming trends to paint the future of EHR Software, have a glance at the interesting facts:
66% of software users search for medical concern information on the web.
88% of physician appointments are scheduled via phone calls.
With pandemic hitting now and then worldwide, the gradual switch to virtual health has become a boon. This has enabled the Electronic Health Record and Electronic Medical Records software to advance in leaps and bounds. Soon the EMR Companies will focus on creating software that is a value-based model along with a volume-based model as well. Let us look at the EMR Software trends to keep an eye out for in the future.
Accessibility
There would be a continued trend towards accessibility in EMR, both accessible for mobile and software. The main thing that holds back EMR is accessibility. The EMRs are very expensive, almost six or even seven figures for the total software price. This price can be cut down in the case of large hospitals and multi-facility networking hospitals with the help of government incentives, but that is not the case with the smaller practices.
Integration and Interoperability
Another issue with the Medical EHR software and EMR Software is their lack of capability with system integration. During any patient visit, the hospital needs to fetch the records from the outpatient practices, and other hospitals also need to get the full health records. This is why EMR accessibility would remain the top priority for every EMR company. This would reduce the manual work for the physicians and hospital staff to enter patient data, upload reports and scans or figure out crucial patient data.
Ease of Use
It is not easy for an individual EMR to fetch the data from the other EMRs. This is why there is a gap between fetching the data and the non-capability to do so. This is why there is a need for more easiness while navigating the data from one system to another. Despite having so many technological advancements, the EMR vendors face a tough time fetching the data.
Need A System for Accurate Data Capture
Every EMR and EHR need the protocol to capture data accurately and precisely. This would not only help generate better results but also eliminate human errors that might happen otherwise. Since these EMRs cover the entire patient’s historical data, capturing and saving the relevant and recently updated information is vital in the minimum possible time. This has enhanced the healthcare service digitization and will improve data integration with various techniques from multiple sources. These sources might include the mentioned but are not limited to point-of-care devices, wearable devices, and the cloud.
An Increasing Demand for Robotic Process Automation
As the EMR market is experiencing a gradual switch to automation, the EMR Vendors need to gain momentum with the trend. And with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), this would be further developed while maintaining the required accuracy by reducing the manual needs.
Standardization
The best way to legitimize the use of the EMR software is standardization. In this case, the EMR companies must provide some extra features and functionalities while maintaining the standards and regulations. And this standardization is not only required for data and functionalities but also E/M Codes, charge captures and more. Standardization will require inclusivity of changing dynamics as well. This will undoubtedly influence the EHR Vendors to develop their products and maintain their accessibility and strength.
Patient-Centric Engagement
To grow your EHR and EMR products, patient engagement is an essential part of the process wherein patient outreach and content creation is the positive add-on. Patient data and engagement is critical in data storage and analysis. This data can be collected from wearable intelligent devices or mobile devices.
However, wearable intelligent gadgets have become the talk of the town as this would provide excellent insight into the patients’ health. Patient engagement enhancement can also be done by sending appointment alerts and subsequent appointment reminders, and updating patient data from varied sources will reduce time and human efforts while improving patient engagement.
AI & Voice Recognition
In the healthcare market, IoT has seen a massive surge in usage. Several practices are looking to integrate IoT with AI features, which will help the provider diagnose the issue accurately and identify the patient health trends. Many EHR vendors are looking to implement and execute this feature in their EHR software. Along with this, Natural Language Processing (NLP) integration will improve provider/physician efficiency. This will also remove the language barrier as the AI and IoT systems will use natural spoken language in their designs.
The IoT-enabled healthcare market is expected to surge from the 2020s $50 billion to nearly $135 billion by 2025.
Concluding the Article
In the coming years, the industry will spectate the EMR and EHR products and services change for good. This change must continue putting pressure on the industry while changing and adapting for its sound. In the coming half the decade, the healthcare IT industry will see unprecedented transformations along with the required digitization changes.
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Looking for an in-depth idea of the EMR Trends and their adaptation? Connect with the experts here!
EMR Vs EHR – What Are the Essential Differences between EMR and EHR
To the layman there is a certain amount of equivalence when one talks about medicine and health. Apparently the two go together and are interconnected which is true to a certain degree but there is a fine distinction when it comes to records, especially those maintained in electronic form, usually in the form of software based EHR systems. This is the current trend and data is stored as Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or Electronic Health Record (EHR), the terms sometimes overlapping and used interchangeably. It must be noted that over 93% of hospitals in the USA use EHRs. A closer look shows that these two are disparate as we will differentiate in the ensuing paragraphs. People do tend to conflate EHR and EMR.
Some common functions of EMR:
Keep individual track of patients
Identify which patients are due for a consultation/checkup/screening and send out notifications
Keep track of patient’s specific health condition and progress as well as response to treatment
Diagnostic record
Financial aspects
What is an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)?
One way to look at an electronic medical record is to consider it as a subset of the electronic health record. The EMR is usually maintained in electronic medical record systems software supplied by a known vendor. The EMR contains data about a specific patient as regards health, demographics, diagnostics, treatments and finance, sometimes in relation to a particular health condition or illness. It is almost always created by clinical or non-clinical staff within a medical practice and it is not transferable electronically due to legal constraints. If at all a patent switches to another medical practitioner who requires access to the electronic medical records then the previous clinician would probably print and send a paper record.
What is an Electronic Health Record (EHR)?
The chief and identifying characteristic of the electronic health recordis that it is created by an enterprise health system and it is shared between healthcare organizations. It is also more wide-ranging in scope, covering not just specific ailment, diagnostics and treatment but also including an overall picture of the person’s general health conditions and physical characteristics. It also includes data about the patients’ treatments at various other healthcare facilities and clinics, covering their history. It paints a larger picture of the patients’ medical journey. Larger healthcare services providers make use of more sophisticated and secure EHR system to manage patients’ electronic health records. Access to the EHR of patients help larger healthcare services to know about their past and arrive at a faster treatment solution instead of having to start diagnostics from scratch. It also saves money and time for both patients and services.
Provided large healthcare services provider obtain their electronic health record system set up by specialist IT vendors there are quite a few benefits:
Ability to deliver specialized, higher level specialized care to referred patients
Save lives by acting fast based on availability of complete medical records
Let patients view their own records and thus encourage and motivate them to take better care
Avoid duplication and redundancy by way of lab tests and diagnostics and save time, effort and money
Provide better follow up care and holistic improvements to patients
Key differences between EMR and EHR:
The above explanations of EMR and EHR show why it is easy to conflate the two together. However, the following fine distinctions should make the differences pointedly clear.
Accessibility
As stated above the EMR is created by a particular doctor or medical facility and such records are treated as confidential. The patient or another healthcare service provider does not have direct access to the EMR.
Electronic health records, maintained in electronic health records software by larger institutions are accessible to patients who can download softcopies. EHR systems are designed to be interoperable between institutions and data is standardized using standards such as Health Level 7 (HL7) that creates standardized formats.
Interoperability
EMR systems used by small medical practitioners may be custom built by vendors and store data in their specifically created formats that may not be directly accessible by EHRs. It is a closed system. Electronic Health Records software is designed to be interoperable between different institutions across the country or the world with standardized formats and data systems as regards documentation, medicine management, diagnostics, clinical decisions, reporting, financials and analytics.
It must also be kept in mind that insurance also comes into play and interoperability provides convenience in this regard.
Higher security in EHRs
EHRs by their very nature are used in large public health services and the fact that data is shareable and systems are interoperable imposes a higher level of security and safety standards to prevent such data falling into the wrong hands or being hacked. As such, larger healthcare services must pay special attention and care to choosing electronic health records software and also on the vendor’s capability to provide ironclad security for storage and also for transmission across the internet.
Which one to opt for? EHR or EMR?
The foregoing paragraphs clearly delineate the vital distinctions between EHR and EMR. The question is which one should you choose as a medical service provider?
Individual practitioners and small clinics will find it easier, convenient and affordable to go in for compact and easy to use electronic medical records software that can be installed and managed in-house. Such practitioners can access patient’s EMR on their office systems as well as through their mobiles. However, it must be kept in mind that there will be quite a few patients whose condition, treatment required and the lack of facilities in the individual doctor’s clinic will make it necessary for such patients to be referred to larger hospitals with better facilities. As such, the right recommendation is that individual practitioners will find it a wise choice to go with electronic health record software right from the start due to interoperability, higher security and access. If this is the choice, and it is the right one at that, what remains to be done is to choose the right vendor and get a cloud based EHR software solution that includes messaging, financials and billing in one package.
