Electronic Health Record

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a medical record or any other information relating to the past, present or future physical and mental health, or condition of a patient which resides in computers which capture, transmit, receive, store, retrieve, link, and manipulate multimedia data for the primary purpose of providing health care and health-related services.

EHR records includes patient demographics, progress notes, SOAP notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports.

Not-for-profit organizations such as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Health Level 7 (HL7) and Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) are involved in the standardization process for EHR in the US. In Europe, CEN's TC/251 is responsible for EHR standards, while at a global level, ISO TC215 produces standards for EHR requirements as well as accepting certain standards from other standards organisations. The openEHR Foundation develops and publishes EHR specifications and open source EHR implementations, which are currently being used in Australia and parts of Europe. In Canada, Canada Health Infoway is mandated to accelerate the development and adoption of electronic health information systems.

GPLMedicine is a site from a Free Software advocate site that compares open source EHRs. It argues that it is immoral to use any license but the GPL for EHR software.

Reference

 * Murphy, G. F. et al. (1999), Electronic Health Records: Changing the Vision (ISBN 0721673864),  W.B. Saunders Company (Elsevier), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, p.5.