The Roadmap for Sharing Electronic Health Records: The Emerging Ubiquity and Cloud Computing Trends

Abstract

Medical paper-based records have been in existence for decades and their gradual replacement by computer-based records has been slowly underway for over twenty years in healthcare systems. Computerized information systems have not achieved the same degree of penetration in healthcare as that seen in other sectors such as finance, transport and the manufacturing and retail industries. Further, deployment has varied greatly from country to country and from specialty to specialty and in many cases has revolved around local systems designed for local use. Electronic medical record systems lie at the center of any computerized health information system. Without them other modern technologies such as disease surveillance systems cannot be effectively integrated into routine clinical workflow. The paperless, interoperable, multi-provider, multi-specialty, multi-discipline computerized medical record, which has been a goal for many researchers, healthcare professionals, administrators and politicians for the past two decades, is however about to become reality in many countries. This article provides a roadmap vision based on the emerging web technologies that hold great promise for addressing the challenge of sharing electronic health records. It starts with addressing the ubiquity trend and how it can be realized based on the new cloud computing paradigm to share electronic heath records like the community of care records/documents (CCRs, CCDs). The article also addresses the security concerns related to sharing electronic health records over the cloud.