One way to promote major health care savings, reduce medical errors, and standardize health care is the adoption of EMR. EMR or Electronic Medical Record is the storage of a patient’s medical record in digital format. Just like IT investments have yielded significant gains for other industries, EMR systems have a potential effect on the healthcare industry.

Advantages

• Allows sharing of patient information by practicing physicians and hospitals. This ensures timely, patient centric and portable care.
• Reduces medical errors and increases physician efficiency.
• Speeds up and accurately processes bills.
• Prevents duplication of lab tests, imaging and other similar services.
• Offers a low-cost, efficient means of distributing reminders to patients and responding to patients’ inquiries through electronic messaging.
• Reduces storage space and standardizes patient records.
• Identifies patients needing specific services by integrating recommendations for preventive services along with patient data. This helps to track the frequency of preventive services and reminds physicians to offer needed tests during visit by a patient.
• Facilitates clinical trials by easily identifying potential clinical trial participants. It reduces the overhead costs and data errors as well.