Government Support Behind Rising Electronic Health Record Usage

With everything going digital, why must healthcare stay behind?! Currently, the most-common form in which digitization in the healthcare sector is visible is electronic health records (EHR). As is clear by the term, an EHR is nothing but a digital file containing a patient’s complete medical data, including prescriptions, log of doctor visits, results of hematological and radiological studies, surgery reports, diagnosis, information on follow-ups, and even billing and insurance data. EHR has several advantages, such as a lesser need to visit the doctor, as the digital file can simply be shared over the internet.

For instance, the U.S. implemented the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009 to modernize its healthcare industry. To ensure this happens, medical practitioners who have successfully integrated the technology in their operations are incentivized. Moreover, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked the federal government for $100 million in 2019 to use EHR for evaluating the safety and efficacy of drugs, by allowing researchers and doctors to share the clinical trial data more efficiently.

EHR has several components, including patient management, practice management, referral management, e-prescription, population health management, and others. Among these, practice management has found the most-widespread application in the years gone by, as the focus on improving the daily operations of clinics and large-scale medical centers is strong. In the future, the adoption of the e-prescription component is expected to increase the fastest, mainly due to the rising need to prevent prescription fraud. A doctor sends the electronic form of the prescription to the pharmacist, which makes it difficult for the prescription to be manipulated.

During 2013–2017 (historical period), the EHR market was dominated by North America, because of the growing geriatric population and rising awareness on the benefits of these solutions. For instance, the United Nations says that in 2019, 59.9 million North Americans were in the age group of 65 and above, and by 2050, their number will rise to 96.3 million. During the forecast period, Asia-Pacific (APAC) will be the fastest-advancing market, owing to the investments being poured in by government and other organizations to implement EHRs.

The EHR market is bifurcated on the basis of delivery mode into on-premises and web/cloud-based. Of these, the web-cloud-based bifurcation held the larger share in the industry in 2017, as this mode makes the data easily accessible. This is why insurance companies, as well as healthcare providers, are rapidly hosting patient data on the cloud or web. In addition to making the information readily available, the web/cloud-based approach to using electronic health records is also cost-effective, as it requires no expensive IT infrastructure component to be installed on site.