Thursday, October 29, 2009

EMR vs. EHR


According to this report: The National Alliance for Health Information Technology Report to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on Defining Key Health Information Technology Terms (April 28, 2008), there is a distinction between EMR (electronic medical record) and EHR (electronic health record). I don't think that most people will argue that PHR (personal health record) is its own entity. However, there's a debate out there as to whether EMR should be interchangeable with EHR.

Although EMR and EHR are very familiar terms, there are some distinct differences between these two terms. Let me bold those differences:

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, gathered, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within one health care organization.
Electronic Health Record (EHR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be created, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff across more than one health care organization.
OK, for the sake of completeness, I'll throw in this definition as well:

Personal Health Record (PHR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that conforms to nationally recognized interoperability standards and that can be drawn from multiple sources while being managed, shared, and controlled by the individual.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the straight forward definitions.

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  2. Well said. EMR is specific to "medical" in one implementation. Theoretically there could be an ESR (Electronic Surgical Record), EPR (Electronic Psych Record), etc... So the EHR is more general and all-encompassing, with everything having to do with health at multiple institutions and entities such as labs (LIS).

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  3. I agree, EMR should be interchangeable with EHR

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