System Safety in Healthcare
Electronic Medical Record Assimilation and Integration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56094/jss.v53i2.88Keywords:
medical record, EMR, data integration, data standardizationAbstract
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are the digital version of paper charts. They are the electronic record of an individual’s health-related information that is created, gathered, managed, and consulted by licensed clinicians and staff [Refs. 1-3]. This article will focus on some of the challenges of health record integration between often disparate systems — internally, across a mix of systems, or externally, such as entities ranging from federal and state agencies, insurance companies, physician practices, medical facilities and pharmacies. The challenges of data collection, assimilation and integration remain at the forefront of our electronic medical record era [Refs. 1, 6-9]. Seamlessly moving information across disparate information systems becomes even more challenging when the data involves confidential medical information.