Summary
Objectives
Electronic patient record (EPR) systems are increasingly used and have matured sufficiently
so as to contribute to high quality care and efficient patient management. Our objective
is to summarize current trends and major achievements in the field of EPR in the last
year and to discuss their future prospects.
Results
Integrating health data from a variety of sources in a comprehensive EPR is a major
prerequisite for e-health and eresearch. Current research continues to elaborate architectures,
technologies and security concepts. To achieve semantic interoperability standards
are developed on different levels, including basic data types, messages, services,
architectures, terminologies, ontologies, scope and presentation of EPR content. Standards
development organisations have started to harmonize their work to arrive at a consensus
standard for EPR systems. Integrating the health care enterprise as a whole will optimize
efficient use of resources, logistics and scheduling.
Conclusions
The past few years have seen a myriad of developments of EPR systems. However, it
is still a long way, until EPR systems can flexibly fulfill all user requirements
and an EHR will become broadly accepted. Semantic interoperability will be a key to
successful EPR use, especially to avoid double data entries and to better integrate
data recording within local workflows. The patient will become an empowered partner,
not only by giving him access to his health data. All this will result in enormous
quantities of data. Thus, time has come to determine how relevant data can be presented
to the stakeholders adequately.
Keywords
Computerized patient record systems - electronic health record - standards - interoperability
- medical informatics
