The writer Dr. RK Umesh Singh, is a REGIONAL MANAGER for SIEMENS, MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS SYSTEM in JEDDAH (KSA), since last 6yrs. SIEMENS is a global Multinational (GERMANY) Co.

Replacement of paper charts with electronics one has been a long-standing goal of medical informatics. Some advantages of electronic charts are that they can be accessed simultaneously by multiple physicians from different locations. Additionally the data can be displayed in various formats to meet the needs of different users, and they can be checked automatically for potential errors such as drug interactions.

Because electronic charts tend to follow the paper-chart metaphor, practicing physicians find electronic charts to be understandable and do not need to know much about them, unless they are called upon to participate in the selection of a system. Should that occur, there is substantial literature to refer to for guidance. Two examples of important criteria follow:

First a key issue in the decision whether to adopt electronic records in a practice is the trade-off between the additional time you will spend recording data and the benefits of having the data in electronic form. Physicians accustomed to dictating or writing in paper charts will find that entering the same data in an electronic chart takes more time. However, once data is are captured, the increased accessibility of the data and the ability to display or print them in numerous formats may provide compensatory efficiencies. Thus key evaluation questions are: How many additional minutes per patient will the documentation take? Can that time be reduced? Will the compensatory efficiencies outweigh the time spent?

Second, since the patients tend to see many clinicians (specialists and consultants), data about any patient may be recorded by multiple practitioners distributed over a geographic region. If there is to be any hope of consolidating this data into a coherent record of medical care, computer systems that can interoperate and use the same data coding schemes(by adhering to existing international standards) are to be preferred.

Note that currently available commercial systems for single practices or single hospitals are mature products, but systems that can interoperate using standards are still around the corner and perhaps worth waiting for if the ability to share information is important in a practice.