Analysis of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth Technology

This report provides an overview of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Telehealth Technology, examining their meaning, benefits, and disadvantages within the healthcare industry. It discusses how telehealth utilizes technology to provide remote healthcare services, including appointment sch...Read More

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Title: Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth
Technologies

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Abstract:
The following research is about the Electronic Medical Record Telehealth
Technology. The paper discusses the meaning and exact nature of the Electronic Medical
Record Telehealth Technology and also the advantages and disadvantages of the same in the
health care industry. Problems related to using the telehealth technology have also been
discussed.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................5
2. Telehealth Technology.......................................................................................................5
3. Electronic Medical Records (EMR)...................................................................................7
4. Advantages of Electronic Medical Records (EMR)...........................................................8
5. Disadvantages of Electronic Medical Records (EMR).....................................................10
6. Complications related to the Electronic Medical Records (EMR)...................................11
7. Conclusion:.......................................................................................................................13
8. References:........................................................................................................................14

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1. Introduction
Science and technology have always worked to provide better techniques, skills
process and methods. They work tirelessly to make life simpler and better for the general
public by inventing many important elements that have now become important for the
humans like the computers and cell phones. (Dorsey & Topol, 2016)
Many sectors of the business, technical and management sector have begun using
internet and technology to run their organisations efficiently. Using technology makes simple
tasks like accounting, administrative work simple for the organisations. There is no room for
errors to occur as the data is assimilated together in a systematic manner and anyone with
access to it can easily find the required data. This makes the intricate tasks of maintaining
records, scheduling appointments, arranging resources, keeping a count of people in the
organisation easier. Information Technology has proved to be a boon to all the sectors of the
society, changing the life of the people for the better. (Dubey et al. 2015)
For the past few years, the health industry too has ventured into the field of
technology. The technology used by heath sector is called telehealth technology which
basically means using different, desktop, internet and mobile applications to store patient
information. This resolves many issues regarding the health sector which will be further
discussed in the following research about the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth
Technologies. The research also discusses and analyses the problems related to the Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth Technologies. (Jawhari et al. 2016)
2. Telehealth Technology
Telehealth using technological devices like the computers, mobiles and other
digital platforms that allows people to access the health care services remotely. Telehealth
has made is easier for people to get medical care and for the doctors to connect with their

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patients quickly and immediately. Telehealth is made available to general public in the form
of mobile applications or web applications. Patients can find all the care and services they
require by directly accessing their securely guarded account on the applications. (Fleischman
et al. 2016)
Telehealth makes it possible to:
1. Schedule appointments
Telehealth applications allow you to choose the correct type of specialists that you
may need to consult in case you aren’t able to decide for yourself. The web-based
application provides you with a series of questions and based on the answers you
provide; they give a list of plausible specialists that you need to be consulting. It also
allows you to enter your symptoms into the system to get a better understanding of the
problem.
2. Remote health monitoring
. The patients just have to update information like their blood pressure, sugar, glucose
and heart rate.
Remote health monitoring can also be used for old people with memory related
disease where doctors can keep track of any kind of changes that can occur within
them.
3. Virtual discussions between doctors
Doctors can consult other doctors virtually to discuss various medical cases
and get their inputs and view about the same. General physicians can share medical
reports like the X-ray, CT scan reports, blood test results with the specialist and ask
for an opinion about the patients and future prospects in case there is a serious issue.

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New doctors can also consult the experienced doctors regarding advices related to the
field and alternative ways of carrying out the treatment.
4. Keep track of your personal health and history
These applications allow you to store information regarding your health
like your food logs, appointment schedules for your follow ups or six-monthly dental
treatment and such things. The applications also allow you to store in your calorie
intake, calculate your fitness like your workout for the day and the calories burnt
doing those activities, schedule prompts to take your daily dose of medicines and
record all your vital information like blood types, allergies, food habits etc.
3. Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
A part of telehealth technologies is that it allows you to keep a record of all your
medical records virtually. They also allow you to keep a copy of those records on cloud so
they can be accessed easily. The Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is like a single chart of
patients instead of various charts at different health care facilities. These files can be accessed
from any part of the world and it also allows to present every record to the current doctor so
that the doctor has a clear picture of your health and provide the correct diagnosis for your
problem. There is no way to lose documents once they are stored virtually. Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) are also eco-friendly as it saves all the paper that would have been
used to print out the reports and also creating copies just in case the copies are misplaced.
(Mallampalli et al. 2018)
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) have been proven to increase the quality of
care and safety of the patients. IT allows doctors to come up with accurate diagnosis and

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favourable treatments for patients. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) also help reduce the
unnecessary treatments, error in diagnosis and improve interactions between patients and
health care providers. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) allow learning doctors to
understand various cases and comprehend the reasons for the given diagnosis. (Gottlieb et
al.2015)
4. Advantages of Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
As already established above, Electronic Medical Records (EMR) assist the doctors
to provide a better care to the patients and also allows patient to have all the documents
available at a single platform without having to worry about misplacing them. There are
various applications that allow patients to store medical records and their history of health
electronically. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) provides a number of benefits to both the
patients and doctors alike.
1. Positive effect on workflow
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) reduces many problems that can arise due to
human errors. The information stored on the application can be accessed even
remotely by doctors who may not be able to come down and physically to check up
on the patient.
2. Better doctor-patient relationships
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) also leads to a better relation between
the patients, their families, their family doctor, the team of doctors that is responsible
for the treatment and also the specialists that are consulted by the head doctor in case
of emergency.

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Remotely booking appointments with the doctor makes it better for the patient as
there won’t be any miscommunication and the doctor will be available at the time of
appointment which means the patient wont have to wait long hours for the doctor to
arrive and go home dejected in case the doctor does not show up.
3. High quality information storage system.
Several tools and resources like the body mass and index calculators, can
be accessed easily. The defining factor in whether something is to be considered share
of the lawful health record is not where the information exists in or the presentation of
the material, but rather how the data is used and whether it is practical to expect the
information to be habitually released when an appeal for a complete medical record is
received. (Manca 2015)
4. Favourable financial assistance.
The billing team the hospitals are prone to errors caused when a proper list is not
maintained for the patients or there is a mix up in the names. These can prove to be an
inconvenience to the patients. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) stores data and
records patient wise and hence the billing team is able to provide precise bills at the
time of discharge and the patients too can cross check the bills by accessing their
accounts on the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) web or mobile applications.
5. Disadvantages of Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
Financial organizations and many other commerce have successfully moved on
from paper-based records to electronic ones, but the health care industry is a completely

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different matter. While top-notch technology is used to diagnose and treat many ailments, the
back office of the industry still runs on paper. Though there are services like Electronic
Medical Records (EMR) used by huge medical institutions, the smaller clinics and hospitals
still refrain from using the technology due to some factors related to the technologies.
(Alpert, 2016)
Just like any other technological advancements, Electronic Medical Records (EMR) too have
shortcomings due to which the technology to be widely used in the healthcare industry.
According to Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 1996 the
hospitals, clinics and any kind of medical care institutions have to safe keep patients’ medical
records. Failing to do so will cost the institution $250,000 as a fine and at least ten years of
prison time for violation of the act. (Ronquillo & Zuckerman, 2017)
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) does not guarantee safety of the
information completely as it depends upon the encoding and security measures used to
safeguard the information. Also, there might be technical issues that arise like internet issues
or incompatibility of devices, due to which Electronic Medical Records (EMR) applications
might become inaccessible. At such times, there would be no records to be accessed and the
doctors will become incapable to serve a diagnosis about the patients. (Paterick et al. 2018)
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) allow doctors to have a complete background knowledge
of the patient’s conditions at all the time, like treatments already tried and tested, latest
medical care given, allergies, and if the patient has undergone any surgery that would affect
the treatment that the doctors have in mind. With the Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
becoming inaccessible, the doctor can only provide diagnosis based on what the patient has
informed and he symptoms that the patient experiences. (Parthasarathy et al. 2018)

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Rural and under developed areas of the societies will not have access to the internet due to
which the people living there would not be able to maintain the Electronic Medical Records
(EMR) for themselves. This will again make it difficult to provide a clear diagnosis and
suggest treatment accurately to people who don’t have Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
saved on the web applications.
6. Complications related to the Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
1. Compromising Patient privacy due to Electronic Medical Records (EMR):
The Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are accessible to everyone. Just as
easy as this feature makes it for the correct people to access the records, it also allows
the wrong people to take a peak into the medical history of the patients. Hackers can
easily access patient files and make changes into them, that will cause harm to the
patient. This harm may not only be caused to the patients’ life but also the insurance
companies may not approve a Mediclaim application that could forge and that won’t
meet their own criteria for the insurance to be accepted. (Aldosari, 2017)
2. Security breaches due to Electronic Medical Records (EMR):
The Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is an expensive service provided
by the medical institutions. Even though information technology has methods that do
not allow unauthorized access to the people. Even then, it is really easy for individuals
with abundant knowledge of software and security networks to breach the security
walls of the security system set by the information technology team of the institution.
There have been multiple cases of data leak in the past and there won’t be a guarantee
that it wont happen in the future. Patient medical records are to be secured and well-
guarded by institutes and if the institute fails to do so they breach the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 1996. The consequences of these

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breaches are complex and will even cost the owner the medical institute. (Duncan et
al. 2018)
7. Conclusion:
Technology has evolved to improve the life style of the people and also allow
institutions and organisations to offer better and advanced services and products to the
general public. Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth Technologies is one such
example. It allows patients and doctors to have a virtual repository for storing medical
records of all the patients that can be accessed by only the authorized personnel. These
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) are used by the doctors, physicians and specialists to
confer a better and precise diagnosis to the patients. It does not matter if the patient is
physically present or not as remote monitoring and virtual appointments have been made
possible by the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth Technologies. However, the
Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth Technologies also have a flip side. Since they
are stored on the internet, places with no internet connection cannot take advantage of the
technology. Also, security and privacy breaches are possible depending on the level of
security used to secure it.
The only way Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth Technologies can be
used with any apprehension is when the people are assured their data will be safeguarded.
Until then, it is a long road before the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Telehealth
Technologies could be used by everyone.

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8. References:
Aldosari, B. (2017). Patients' safety in the era of EMR/EHR automation. Informatics in Medicine
Unlocked, 9, 230-233.
Alpert, J. S. (2016). The electronic medical record in 2016: Advantages and
disadvantages. Digital Medicine, 2(2), 48.
Bagley, S. C., Sirota, M., Chen, R., Butte, A. J., & Altman, R. B. (2016). Constraints on
biological mechanism from disease comorbidity using electronic medical records and
database of genetic variants. PLoS computational biology, 12(4), e1004885.
Dorsey, E. R., & Topol, E. J. (2016). State of telehealth. New England journal of
medicine, 375(2), 154-161.
Dubey, H., Yang, J., Constant, N., Amiri, A. M., Yang, Q., & Makodiya, K. (2015, October). Fog
data: Enhancing telehealth big data through fog computing. In Proceedings of the ASE
bigdata & socialinformatics 2015 (p. 14). ACM.
Duncan, T., Rahim, E., & Burrell, D. (2018). Challenges in Healthcare Post-EMR Adoption.
In MWAIS 2018 Proceedings.
Fleischman, A., Hourigan, S. E., Lyon, H. N., Landry, M. G., Reynolds, J., Steltz, S. K., ... &
Ludwig, D. S. (2016). Creating an integrated care model for childhood obesity: a randomized
pilot study utilizing telehealth in a community primary care setting. Clinical obesity, 6(6),
380-388.
Gottlieb, L. M., Tirozzi, K. J., Manchanda, R., Burns, A. R., & Sandel, M. T. (2015). Moving
electronic medical records upstream: incorporating social determinants of health. American
Journal of Preventive Medicine, 48(2), 215-218.

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Jawhari, B., Ludwick, D., Keenan, L., Zakus, D., & Hayward, R. (2016). Benefits and challenges
of EMR implementations in low resource settings: a state-of-the-art review. BMC medical
informatics and decision making, 16(1), 116.
Mallampalli, V., Safadi, H., & Faraj, S. (2018). The Role of Anchoring in Actualizing IT
Affordances in EMR Implementations.
Manca, D. P. (2015). Do electronic medical records improve quality of care?: Yes. Canadian
Family Physician, 61(10), 846-847.
Parthasarathy, R., Steinbach, T., Knight, J., & Knight, L. (2018). Framework to Enhance Nurses’
Use of EMR. Hospital topics, 96(3), 85-93.
Paterick, Z. R., Patel, N. J., Ngo, E., Chandrasekaran, K., Jamil Tajik, A., & Paterick, T. E. (2018,
October). Medical liability in the electronic medical records era. In Baylor University
Medical Center Proceedings (Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 558-561). Taylor & Francis.
Ronquillo, J. G., & Zuckerman, D. M. (2017). Software‐Related Recalls of Health Information
Technology and Other Medical Devices: Implications for FDA Regulation of Digital
Health. The Milbank Quarterly, 95(3), 535-553.