Electronic Health Records

What is EHR?

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are digital representations of a patient’s medical history and associated healthcare data. Medical facilities store these records on secure local servers, or cloud-based systems store them, allowing authorised healthcare providers remote access. This method of storage streamlines both the management and retrieval of patient information, making it more efficient for clinicians and support staff to deliver care.

What information is in an EHR?

EHRs combine information from a person’s electronic patient records (EPRs), such as their medical history and treatment, with other key details, including:

• Demographics and psychographics
• Vaccinations
• Allergies 
• Billing information (for private healthcare)
• Test results
• Appointment notes

What are the benefits of EHR systems?

As the NHS and healthcare organisations across the UK start their digital transformation, electronic health records offer many benefits. 

Communication

With the seamless integration of other healthcare systems, such as patient flow, patient management, medication management, etc., communication and collaboration between healthcare professionals and departments become quicker and easier. This saves valuable time for clinicians, freeing them up to better focus on patient care rather than document admin. 

Security and data protection

Cloud-based electronic health records can be invaluable to security and effective data protection. Paper documents are more vulnerable to unauthorised access, tampering, theft, and environmental damage. Digitising these records allows for more robust security measures to be implemented to protect patient data. These include password protection, role-based access, and access monitoring to ensure access to the information is always controlled. 

Error reduction

EHRs are also effective in reducing human mistakes within the healthcare sector. This is because remote storage allows a greater range of access for staff, so there is less duplication of records. All relevant staff members can operate from one main file relating to the patient receiving care, improving the patient experience, treatment accuracy and minimising the risk of errors.

Are EHRs mandatory for healthcare?

Yes, in 2023, the UK government issued a mandate that 95% of NHS trusts should be using electronic health records by March 2025. Various factors and delays resulted in this goal not being achieved, but with 91% of trusts having implemented EHR systems so far, full digitisation is underway.

Challenges of EHRs

Electronic health records have become a required system in the UK because of the benefits they provide to professionals and patients. However, there are a few challenges to be aware of when implementing EHRs. 

• Cost – healthcare organisations will need to budget in the upfront costs of buying suitable EHR software and maintaining the data.
• Productivity and staff training – whilst EHRs will positively impact productivity in the long term, it takes time for staff to learn a new system and use it effectively in their workflows. It’s beneficial to digitise, but those benefits won’t come instantly, while staff are learning how to process and manage documents faster within the new system.
  

To find out more about the different types of EHRs, check out our guide covering the topic.