Comprehensive Study: My Health Record System and Its Impact

This report provides a comprehensive study of the My Health Record system, an online platform designed to securely store and manage individual health information. It begins with an introduction to the system and its role in healthcare reform, followed by a discussion of the problems associated with traditional health record systems, such as paper-based methods and Electronic Medical Records (EMR), including issues like lack of standardization, provider time constraints, confidentiality threats, and interoperability challenges. The report then explores the capabilities of the My Health Record system, highlighting its ability to provide a central repository for patient health data, facilitate clinician interpretations, and improve access to medical information. The benefits of the My Health Record system are also examined, including improved patient access to their health information, better tracking of medications and allergies, and the potential for Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP) to enhance efficiency and reduce healthcare costs. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of proper implementation to ensure patient data security and the overall positive impact of the online healthcare system on the future of healthcare and the healthcare sector.

Running head: STUDY OF MY HEALTH RECORD
STUDY OF MY HEALTH RECORD
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note:

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1. Introduction
The online ‘My Health Record’ is a safe and secure mode of the summary of the
health information of an individual. This online method has been proposed by the Industry of
Health in order to continue a reformation process within the system of healthcare industry.
The proposed health record system is issued to help in reducing the problems which exist
within the existing system. The online mode of healthcare system could be helpful in sharing
the information of the patient with the doctors in order to get proper assistance from the
healthcare sector (Faden et al., 2013).
2. Discussion
2.1 Problems with Health Record Systems
With the advancements in the field of healthcare technology, there have been many
changes that have taken place within the healthcare industry. Though the technology has
advanced to new levels, but still some of the modern medical counters make use of the paper-
based methods for recording the information of the patients. Though the use of electronic
methods of recording information has many welfares, yet the use of such online methods of
health record information is very less. The electronic medical record (EMR) can be a very
helpful method for the modern systems in order to save time in cases of critical situations of
the patients (Denny et al., 2013).
Several problems have been identified with the EMR that includes the lack of
improved standards of medication facilities, increased time of provider of facilities,
confidentiality related threat and down time for the computers. During cases of down time for
computers, the primary threat of accessing the correct information at real time is true. In these
cases, the increase in the reliability on computer systems would be helpful in resolving the
problem.

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Another major problem that might arise with the use of EMR is the lack of exact
systems for interchanging information. Though several principles are existing for the
communication of pure data, but still there is no such improvement in the areas related to the
patient symbols and signs. The privacy and security of the patient data is another major area
of concern for the EMR systems. Various privacy specialists have listed the potential
extortions, which might exploit the information related to the patients (Meeks et al., 2014).
2.2 Capabilities of My Health Record System
The My Health Record system is capable of recording the information of the health of
various patients on their online platform. The primary objective of the health record system is
to assist as an origin point for the different interpretations of the clinician. This would help in
the complete scrutiny of the health of the patient. The preceding records of the treatment of
the patients would be stored on the cloud platform. Based on the previous records, the doctors
would suggest the best facilities of healthcare for the patients (Charles, Gabriel & Furukawa,
2013).
The health related information of the patient is being put on the online platform across
several locations. These locations might include hospitals and imaging centers. The overview
of the My Health Record System would be extremely helpful for various healthcare
organizations as they would be able to provide many more benefits. The benefits that would
be provided by the My Health Record System would be faster access to medical systems and
ease of access to more information related to healthcare systems (Jamoom et al., 2013).
The My Health Record System would store and record the entire overview of the
health of an individual, summary of an event, discharge summary of the patient and records
of medical prescriptions. With the help of My Health Record System, the patient can view the
online status of their health information. They would also be able to enter the updated status

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of their health information, which would be helpful for the doctors to keep a regular check of
the health of an individual (Bowman, 2013).
2.3 Benefits of My Health Record System
With the introduction of the My Health Record system of health information, it should
be taken into concern about the benefiting factors of an individual from the new digital health
technology. Any visit to a healthcare specialist, hospital or other medical facility would be
helpful in resulting for the formation of many important information that would be related to
the health of an individual. The online health record system will help in providing general
accessibility to the summary of the health of an individual. It would also keep a track of the
immunizations, medications, allergies of any individual. The system would be also able to
share their personal information of their health with their suitable healthcare facilities who
are concerned for their health (Li et al., 2014).
Another important advantage of the My Health Record system is the ability of
Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP). This system would help any individual to
download the prescription and show the updated health information of the patient to the
healthcare providers. The healthcare providers would be able to give better information of the
related disease and hence suggest the proper cure for the disease (Linsky & Simon, 2013).
This would help in the early detection of any kind of vital disease and thus would help the
doctors to provide proper treatment. The My Health Record system would help in increasing
the efficiency within the existing system of healthcare. They would be helpful in the
reduction of the number of unnecessary tests that would help in reducing the medical services
cost, which are obscured on the patients.

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3. Conclusion
The above report concludes that the My Health Record system would be a major step
in the field of healthcare facilities. It could provide many health related benefits to an
individual in terms of better facilities of healthcare in comparison with the existing healthcare
systems, which are primarily manually based. These functions should be properly
implemented as to ensure that the information of the patient would not be viewed by
unauthorized users. Hence the new and online mode of healthcare system would be extremely
beneficial for the future of people and healthcare sector.

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4. References
Charles, D., Gabriel, M., & Furukawa, M. F. (2013). Adoption of electronic health record
systems among US non-federal acute care hospitals: 2008-2012. ONC data brief, 9, 1-
9.
Jamoom, E., Beatty, P., Bercovitz, A., Woodwell, D., Palso, K., & Rechtsteiner, E.
(2013). Physician adoption of electronic health record systems: United States, 2011.
US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
Bowman, S. (2013). Impact of electronic health record systems on information integrity:
quality and safety implications. Perspectives in Health Information
Management, 10(Fall).
Li, H., Gupta, A., Zhang, J., & Sarathy, R. (2014). Examining the decision to use standalone
personal health record systems as a trust-enabled fair social contract. Decision
Support Systems, 57, 376-386.
Linsky, A., & Simon, S. R. (2013). Medication discrepancies in integrated electronic health
records. BMJ Qual Saf, 22(2), 103-109.
Faden, R. R., Kass, N. E., Goodman, S. N., Pronovost, P., Tunis, S., & Beauchamp, T. L.
(2013). An ethics framework for a learning health care system: a departure from
traditional research ethics and clinical ethics. Hastings Center Report, 43(s1).
Denny, J. C., Bastarache, L., Ritchie, M. D., Carroll, R. J., Zink, R., Mosley, J. D., ... &
Basford, M. A. (2013). Systematic comparison of phenome-wide association study of
electronic medical record data and genome-wide association study data. Nature
biotechnology, 31(12), 1102.

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Meeks, D. W., Smith, M. W., Taylor, L., Sittig, D. F., Scott, J. M., & Singh, H. (2014). An
analysis of electronic health record-related patient safety concerns. Journal of the
American Medical Informatics Association, 21(6), 1053-1059.