Health Care In Digital World

Running head: HEALTH CARE IN DIGITAL WORLD
HEALTH CARE IN DIGITAL WORLD
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HEALTH CARE IN DIGITAL WORLD
Introduction
In this era of modernization, digitals platforms are being used by healthcare professionals
in order to provide patients with better healthcare. Before the emergence of the digital patient
care platforms, healthcare service providers as well as service users had to depend primarily on
paper works and discrepancies were often evidenced. Major discrepancies in paperwork not only
enhance the time needed for providing care to the patents but can also lead to fatality. Digital
health platforms chiefly focus on managing and tracking the health condition of the patents and
its aim is to improve health management for both the healthcare service providers and service
users. Additionally, digital healthcare platforms offer the potential for reduced cost facilitation of
customized medicine (healthit.gov., 2020). In addition, digital technologies allow cross-
disciplinary research and better access to foreign resources irrespective of where they are based.
Some of the most commonly used Digital patient facing digital platforms includes Mobile phone
applications, Electronic Health record. Sensors and wearable technology and online peer support
communities. Amongst various types of patient facing digital technology platforms, one of the
highly used digital platforms is the Electronic Health Record (EHR). In this report, benefits as
well as limitations associated with EHR has been critically analyzed.
Body
An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an online version of a medical record for the
patient, that has been kept over time by the doctor, which can include any of the important
administrative clinical details related to the patient's treatment under a single physician,
including profiles, progress reports, complications, medications, previous medical records, vital
signs, immunizations, laboratory details which radiology report. The EHR possesses the potential

2HEALTH CARE IN DIGITAL WORLD
to help the patients in self management through remote support and treatment adherence. Patients
who reside in rural areas or patents that lack access to healthcare are mostly found to use EHR
platforms in order to obtain medication and treatments. Patients can upload their previous
prescriptions, X-rays and other evidence of health issues and eminent healthcare service users
provides the patents with medication and consultation (Manca, 2015). One of the most popular
EHR platforms includes My health record. This platform can be defined as a secure online
summary of the patient's health information that can be accessed by health service providers
elected by the patient. My Health record provides the patient with access to remote support.
Health providers access the data of the patients through the My health record portal to provide
the best possible care (healthdirect.gov.au., 2020). Additionally, physicians can communicate
directly to the patients through this portal and thus can also enhance their awareness about
certain medical health conditions and thus educating the patients about how to take care of
themselves. To help educate physicians and their patients, various services and devices, such as
medication reaction tests, Framingham calculators, and body mass index calculators can be
obtained easily. Along with remote support, EHRs also allow healthcare service users to obtain
remote treatment through screening.
In the traditional approach, handwritten documents and paper charts are used by
physicians to keep track of the medical history of the patients. Not only was the procedure time
consuming, but medical errors were highly frequent while data were maintained through a
traditional approach. The Electronic health records platform provides information to health care
providers in ways that were not feasible with paper charts (Greiver 2015). Primary care
professionals will also display and print attributes graphs such as weight, levels of cholesterol,
and blood pressure, measuring improvements over time. The EMR increases the accomplishment

3HEALTH CARE IN DIGITAL WORLD
of expectations for chronic disease control, prevention, and screening, as seen in research
demonstrating increased quality measures. Electronic medical records also possess the potential
to provide treatment goals as well as alerts for reminding emergency screening and maneuvers
that are due on an urgent basis. This in turn helped the healthcare providers to tackles areas of
high needs. According to Cms.gov., (2020) , EHRs like the My health records provides the
following benefits that were not provided by the traditional approach of healthcare.
 Providing precise, up-to-date, and full patient details at the point of treatment
 Allowing easy access to medical information for more effective and organized treatment
 Securely sharing electronic information with patients and other clinicians
 Allows clinicians to treat patients more accurately, minimize medical problems and
deliver balanced treatment (healthit.gov., 2020)
 Improvement of patient and physician contact and coordination, and quality in health care
 Allowing more safe and effective prescribing
 Encouraging the advancement of legible, full reporting and accurate, efficient labeling
and billing
 Protecting the safety and confidentiality of patient records
 Empowering providers to enhance quality and work-life balance
 Allowing providers to increase performance and achieve their business targets
 Lowering costs by reduced paperwork, enhanced protection, reduced duplication
The EHR platform along with enabling the health care service providers to provide high
quality and error-free care, also enhances the relationship between the healthcare service
providers and the healthcare service users. Before the emergence of EHR platforms, patients
were not being able to see or understand their health records an lack of understanding awareness