Electronic Medical Records

Also known as electronic health records (EMR or EHR) are systems used by hospitals and clinics to store and access their patient's files. In most cases, these systems attempt to completely replace the paper charts typically used for patient files. These systems have been held up as the ideal approach but still have limited penetration even in industrialized countries. In particular, the cost of implementing and maintaining an EMR system usually overwhelm smaller clinics, especially when one considers the cost of retraining the staff and reworking all of the clinic's processes and procedures to use the systems.

Even for clinics that adopt EMR systems, patients and other clinics have limited access to the data within those systems.

SharedRecords provides a most common denominator for exchange between EMR systems and PHR's. It also provides a gradual transition from paper to electronic records which reduces the cost of adoption organizations and provides flexibility to meet their local needs.