Can electronic health records be made safer?
If you’ve been to the doctor’s office or the hospital recently, chances are good that your medical information was recorded into and/or read from a computer screen or tablet. Indeed, paper charts appear to be racing toward obsolescence.
While this development is not altogether unsurprising given our reliance on technology in so many other aspects of our everyday lives, what is perhaps surprising is that electronic health records — or EHRs — have emerged as a serious threat to patient safety.
Indeed, the threats posed by EHRs aren’t just confined to things like breaches of cyber security or system crashes, but also include the absence of clarity and uniformity in how vital health information is displayed.