There is no doubt, moving patients' records from paper and physical filing systems to computers and their super storage capabilities creates great efficiencies for patients and their providers, as well as health payment systems. Moreover, individual patients, access to good care becomes easier and safer when records can easily be shared. Important information -- such as blood type, prescribed drugs, medical conditions and other aspects of our medical history...etc, can be accounted for much more quickly. Thus, an existing electronic medical record can save time at the doctor's office and at most, quick access to our records can be lifesaving if an emergency occurs and answers to those questions are needed during the emergency decision-making process.

Another benefit is safety: a) in the past, when a doctor closed his practice, retired, moved, or even died; patient records could easily get lost or relocated, making it impossible for patients to get the records they needed to take to a new doctor. Keeping these records electronically, especially in the cases where patients can also gain access to them, means the patient won't be left without the records she may need; b) Money is saved by using electronic medical records; not just the cost of paper and file folders, but the cost of labor and space, too. In any business, time equals money. The efficiencies created by simply typing a few identifying keystrokes to retrieve a patient's record -- as opposed to staring at thousands of file folders, filing and refilling them -- saves a doctor's practice or a hospital many thousands of dollars. That's even taking the cost of the electronic system into account.

Theoretically there should be a great advantage as mentioned above. Practically as we could see in several insitutions, their system is primitive with lack of real IT support. So the result usually they did not have either complete and effective paper system nor electronic system

Hello Mr / Dr Sathian, I went to a seminar about 10 years ago on healthconnect which is Australia's grand plan to move to electronic records and interconnect and consolidate all the records and I have 3 books somewhere here which I did read at the time but it is sometime ago since I have used these and I did loan these out so I would have to search again to locate these and these detailed a trial and protocol for this plan including technology, costs and feasibility. I don't think these books mentioned developing countries but they may have as I did not read these in full and I'll try and search for these and just check, but I guess at the end of the day my thoughts are that yes it would be good in terms of efficiency and effectiveness for treatments and outcomes but implementing the steps in countries that are developing is the problem as the health facilities may not have the knowledge, skill, manpower or infrastructure set up to create these systems. I've just had two photos I submitted included on the global health gateway calendar for this year I believe although I have not seen this, but maybe someone from that group knows about your query whom could provide more concrete advice and answers to your queries. Regards, Deborah

Another benefit of electronic records is that they allow access to valuable data that can be used for both clinical audit and research, helping to determine the effectiveness of both policy and practice upon health outcomes. In addition local data can be incorporated into wider data sets for national and international assessment and meta-analysis.

The US Veterans affairs hospitals took a lead with electronic medical records some years ago and that is widely viewed in this organization as a very good move. Have there beens some problems at times? Are the systems still being improved? Of course, but the benefits are seen as far outweighing the costs.

Regarding discarding after 5 years, that strikes me as a bad idea. It is often more than 5 years before the problems with certain drugs and procedures are recognized and compensation/ameliorative treatment is ethically due to affected patients.

I found the health connect book that includes a section on international/ national experiences. Other countries include UK, Canada, NZ and US but none of these systems currently in operation is comparable in scale to what is proposed under Health Connect. There is no info in this 2nd book on developing countries. I have as yet to find the 1st and 3rd books but I doubt there will be anything in these either. If you want me to detail the summary on the UK, US, NZ and Canada I can do this for you.

It is quite necessary. As a patient I had visited one of the hospitals and there was a question regarding if any family members had the similar complications. When I said yes...the next question was where they were treated. Luckily they were treated in same hospital. I just had give their hospital ID number and did not need to go through long paper works. Also they were able to dig into the years old files and gave me best of advises and treatment. Given that these would have been in paper files, I am not sure if I would gave received such great treatment within a days time.

Being a research scholar myself in area of Public Health while visiting hospitals and collecting data, I was great deal of relief to know the hospital had electronic data and all they did was give a command and I got the list of patients, their complications, treatment and present status with regard to health. Where as it was a great trouble to go to the record room and dig out information where few things were missing.

It is quite necessary to make it electronic so that valuable data do not go missing. They are saved and can be found in a matter of few minutes.

e-health is the system in Australia now. I didn't find the other health connect books, but the 10 year trial has finished so e-health is it. I'm not sure that I agree with the technology revolution to be honest it is a bit over the top, my late grandmother's care was the best care for me when I was ill years ago, nothing could beat that.

In actual fact the e-Health system is NOT in Australia and is (quietly) being dropped as a political 'hot potato'. South Australia wouldn't agree to signing up to it, because it would have shown the extent of relative oversupply of doctors in that state, etc. Since the whole program has languished all the relevant IT specialists capable of implementing it have been 'lost', and the scheme is unlikely to be reactivated for a some time , if ever.