The world is growing and fruiting with the help of technological conceptual advancements. These improvements in technology, has brought a change that all the sectors now use to serve with modern facilities and maintain the best coordination among these facilities. The introduction of medical software like EMR and EHR is the advancement in medical sector which coordinates with the areas of clinical decision making, drug prescribing etc. The clinical decision making, and drug and treatment prescribing are the first hand uses of EHR data. But there are some alternate uses of EHR data also. We better can say it to be the re-use of EHR data. Mostly in case of clinical and other drug related researches and studies the reuse of EHR/EMR data is incorporated. A clinical research is geared by the need to provide reliable data to support safety and efficacy. And the data from EHR lays the foundation for the reliability of the data from a clinical research which is to be used in furtherance. Data retrieved from medical software systems like EHR should be of such a quality that it improves the efficiency of patient care. This quality concern should not be there only from the point of first use of EHR data but also from the re-uses of data mostly by researchers to support healthcare. But the re-use of EHR data must be treated with caution, because the data protection issue is always pertained to reuse of data like the EHR data. So, we need a system that can help us in achieving a proper balance in between the protection of data in one hand and more optimized reuse of data on the other.
The use and re-use of EHR data in the healthcare information segment is always accompanied by various drawbacks. These drawbacks accompanying re-use of data vary from lack of legal and technical standards to uniformity of use. We need proper standards and protocols of data collection and the re-use. Only a properly collected piece of information whether primary or secondary can help in achieving research objectives. The re-use of data, generated by a medical software be it an EHR or any other record keeping system, should be cost-effective. Clinical experiments or trials done with re-use of EHR data is a cost effective way than collecting the data afresh. The uniformity in approach in re-use of data from medical software (EHR) is another point of concern in our discussion. The present situation in health care requires researches to carry out research studies in isolated fashion at different locations. The use of the EHR which is the common medical software in use varies widely across different nations worldwide and so challenges the re-use of EHR data in clinical researches and other uses. Other issues like the maintenance of patient confidentiality, requirement of time and cost effective resources are a few to requiring attention in the field of re-use of EHR data. A qualitative control on re-use of EHR data can lead to a sustainable, beneficial and commercial impact on treatment and drug development which ultimately will lead to better healthcare system in a viable economy.
With the increased focus on HIT (Health Information Technology), the situations in US and EU in re-use of EHR data is changing positively. Introduction of HITECH act in US is an initiative in the direction of Health Information Technology. The European Seventh Framework Program for research and technological development is the initiative by EU to focus on HIT. The use of proper EHR systems in place is growing fast in US. The vision of the EFPIA EHR task force is another forcing factor that will help in attaining the standards for re-use of EHR data.
And in future with such a huge amount of efforts we surely will have a proper system with proper medical software in place which will coordinate in re-use of EHR or any such data with satisfaction.
