Implications of EHR on Medical Research

One of the major purposes of the federal program for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) is to produce improved clinical outcomes for patients. Providing patients access to their personal health information and having that information available to their families, caregivers and healthcare providers anywhere at any time is another core requirement of the this program.

According to 2011 Leadership Survey produced by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), 50 percent of healthcare IT executives identified “meaningful use” criteria as their top priority for the next two years.

It’s clear that EHR technology will help healthcare organizations improve patient care and reduce errors, but it also serves another important purpose: EHRs represent a tremendous opportunity for researchers to apply analytics and hypothetical queries against huge datasets representing thousands of real-world patients.

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