INTRODUCTION TO HEALTHCARE
According to Winston S. Churchill, “Healthy citizens are the greatest assets any country can have.”
Every country has their own healthcare system, and it became the responsibility of each country that they should make better plans to promote basic healthcare facilities for the people of the country. However, some countries have seen incredible improvement in the healthcare sector in some last decade or so. But still there are some gaps or flaws in the healthcare system.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health can be defined as “... the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” There is no independent definition of health, and it depends on many factors. A healthcare system can be divided into a public healthcare and private healthcare. Public healthcare is generally run by government agencies and deals with either some groups of people or some individuals whereas private healthcare can be a profitable or non-profitable (NGO).
The current healthcare system in India is composed of primary healthcare, which deals with the primary healthcare centers and some subcenters. Healthcare can also be provided by the hospital or the health centers that include the community health centers; some rural and district hospitals may also come under the health center.
The healthcare sector has grown so much in some recent years and so has the data of the patients. The healthcare system is generating huge volumes of data every day as compared to any other sector. Earlier, the patient’s data was maintained in records books t by the hospitals or some healthcare system. This information was not only difficult to maintain but also difficult when searching in previous data. With the introduction of computer and databases, the management of healthcare data becomes easy for any healthcare system.
The huge volume of data that is generated can be analyzed using big data analytics, which will be useful for many researchers and health practitioners to make the decisions regarding the treatment of the patient. The patients can now store their health records electronically, so that they can access their health records anytime and anywhere they are needed. Such records are called electronic health records (EHR) (Tom Seymour, 2012).
Electronic Health Record (EHR)
A medical record is the collection of a person’s healthcare information. These medical records are used to store the complete medical history of a person. The history could include the patients’ healthcare, previous diseases, different trends of diseases, medication done for different diseases, types of allergies with any medicine, and so on. Thus, these healthcare documents were used to physically store file or medical reports.
In around 1960s, Lockheed developed an electronic system to store the medical history of a person; at that time it was called the Clinical Information System. Then, in the 1970s, the federal government started using the EHR and in 1980s the use of EHR increased and physicians and hospitals started using EHR (Marquez, 2017).
Electronic health records are the records of a patient that are stored electronically. With the electronic health record, a patient does not need to carry all of his or her records to different doctors and hospitals. The patient can access the records in real time. With the electronic health record, it would become easier to do the medical documentation, track the health record, and make the billing and coding process easier. An EHR is also known as electronic medical record (EMR), and both can be used interchangeably. There is another term called the personal health record (PHR). A PHR is a kind of record that can be changed or modified by the person (Roman, 2009). EHRs are protected under HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and cannot be modified, whereas PHR are not covered under HIPAA.
An EHR can consist of the health records of the patient, but it can also contain any document that is important for the EHR, such as clinical information that may include the list of medication, list of allergies with any food item or any medicine, list of immunizations done, laboratory or pathology reports, surgery reports if any had done earlier, etc. An EHR could also consist of any administrative information that might include insurance information, appointment history, diagnostic and procedure applied, billing information, and some emergency contact information.
There are eight core functions of an EHR. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) asked the Institute of Medicine to set standards for the EHR systems. In response to the Institute of Medicine gave the outline of the eight core functions of an EHR (Clancy, 2003).
- • Health information and data management
- • Results management
- • Decision management
- • Electronic communication and connectivity
- • Patient support
- • Administrative processes
- • Reporting and population health
