The sorry state of EMRs
Many operators have bemoaned the state of electronic medical records (EMRs). If only the data was more readable and transferable, then we would have a data revolution, they say. But there’s more to this complex landscape than first meets the eye.
Trade unions and staff in the UK’s NHS have expressed concern about a single private company running any of the service’s key functions. One could argue that EMRs, which hold sensitive patient data, probably come under this umbrella. Add in the fact the NHS is fragmented into many trusts, and you have a recipe for a competitive EMR landscape – which unfortunately makes them much less useful!
The problem is that EMRs are supposed to speak to each other (“interoperability”), yet not only do EMRs built by different companies not speak to each other, there is a competitive advantage in not allowing them to do so.
Take the EMRs of Portuguese private hospital groups Luz Saúde and CUF as an example. A patient could go and get an xray at one group and surgery at another, they could even take their results and give them to the doctor at another group’s hospital. But the patient will be unable to access it, incentivising them to stay on one pathway with one provider.
This throws up problems. In the UK if a patient moves from the jurisdiction of one trust to another, will they be able to access their previous medical history? Perhaps even more worryingly, the moment when data is transferred is when it’s most vulnerable to cyberattacks, meaning even if data could be transferred, doing it between companies is fraught with risk.
In lieu of the NHS deciding to use a single EMR tool what are the business models which could solve this problem?
There are some groups acting as aggregators which can bring NHS data together. This is better, of course, but we are told the way data is presented often makes it difficult to read.
Better yet, there are patient portals which allow patients to download their own data onto their phone, essentially creating portable medical records with a user-friendly interface. HBI understands groups like Induction create systems like this because “with most of the big EMRs their patient facing apps are not good”.
And then there are firms like Omnildex, which create “data stores” where data can be securely viewed without actually transferring it. This is mostly to help with research, but can also be a way patients can view their data.
It’s easy to look at the EMR market like a behemoth where one firm might dominate, but in reality there are no easy solutions – it’s highly competitive, and that competition requires smart business models to plug the gaps and help EMRs live up to their potential. Of course, we could wait for a standard set of pan-European criteria to be legislated for – but that would require something that hitherto has been impossible to achieve: agreement.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Joe Quiruga or call 0207 183 3779.
