Medical Data Protection and Electronic Medical Records - Literature review Example

Medical Data Protection and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Introduction Medical data protection has been pointed out to be very important in many nations. According to the article, Data protection and Medical research by Parliamentary office of science and technology, many nations have come up with new technologies and policies to ensure that medical data is protected (3). As a result, many hospitals have started replacing printed and other hard copy data records with electronic ones. According to the medical studies that have been carried out in various hospitals, it is claimed that EMR has several advantages over the paper records. However, the implementation of EMR in some countries including the US has been claimed to be slow. This is because of the barriers and challenges that the EMR implantation efforts are facing in these countries. The aim of this literature review is to find out the advantages and challenges that the EMR implementation is currently facing and hence try to come up with a solution. This solution is hoped to act as a motivator for governments to come up with medical policies that will fasten the EMR implementation process. Body I.1 Advantages of Implementing EMR for Medical Data Protection A SWOT analysis that was conducted by US Health Care indicates that EMR has several advantages when it comes to data protection. According to Coombs, many hospitals have switched from paper medical records to EMRs (196). EMR is argued to reduce work load of healthy professionals. AS Coombs explains, health professional used to spend much time in recording patients’ information down on the papers. This increased their workload, and they ended up with less time in diagnosing and treating patients. According to Veronesi, it is therefore argued that EMR takes less time and hence reduces the workload of the health personnel (76). According to Sidorov, another advantage of EMR is that it offers more protection to medical data (1080). According to a research conducted in Australia, many businesses including private and public hospitals have been loosing data through fire. Recently, a study in the US indicates that a terrorist attack led to loss of a large amount of medical data. As Sidorov points out, EMR are rarely susceptible to any loss unless in rare cases when there is a computer software or hardware breakdown. According to Blumenthal, EMR is claimed to reduce storage expenses in terms of space and cost (2528). Paper records take a lot of storage space requiring files and other storage facilities. These storage facilities require money for installation and maintenance. It is also very difficult for a person to retrieve data from paper records, as they are bulky and require a lot of time. As Blumenthal points out, EMR does not require storage space as the records are digital and hence are stored by the computer memory. It is also very easy to retrieve and access stored Electron Medical Records. However, some studies argue that EMR are no better than medical paper records. According to McDougall, EMR do not offer enough privacy and protection of patients’ information from access by the public (18-19). As he explains, some computer experts can easily hack the medical records from computers using sophisticated technologies. It has also been argued that once, a hardware or software breakdown, the EMR are lost. According to Blumenthal, some studies indicate that EMR are more expense than the medical paper records (2529). It is argued that the computer technologies that are required in the whole process of storing, processing, retrieving and protecting EMR are very expensive. The technology also keeps on evolving day after another. This means that it becomes particularly crucial for continuous training in order to keep the health personnel up to date with the evolving technology. The training and the purchasing of new versions of technology makes EMR an expensive method of storing medical data. I.2 the Challenges Facing Implementation of EMR for Medical Data Protection According to the US Health Care study, despite the many benefits that have associated with EMR, its implementation has been pointed out to be slow in many nations. This is due to the various challenges and barriers that the whole process is facing. According to Sameer and Krista, EMR the initial implementation of an EMR system is very expensive (307-308). This is because it requires expensive technologies which keep on changing due to advancement. Any user who wishes to access these records needs to have the basic knowledge of EMR technology. Therefore, many public hospitals cannot afford to implement EMR as they lack government donation. The private hospitals which are able to implement EMR end up inflicting the costs to their customers, and hence the customers run away from these hospitals. As a result, even the private hospitals are reluctant to implement EMR. According to Lim Chee Siang, Edmund, et al, EMR requires the health personnel to undergo continuous training (5). This is because, EMR technology need updated skills and knowledge to use to utilize and manage the records. According to the US Health Care study, many health personnel are unwilling to participate in EMR training. This is because they argue that the training take a lot of their time and is complicated than paper record. Many governments are also reluctant in releasing funds for this training. This is because they rely on the comfort that there is an existing system, which are paper records, which could be used instead. According to McLeod and Hare, another challenge facing EMR is the decision of governments and private sectors to buy ready- made or custom-made systems (19). It has been argued that there are ready-made systems that require no sophisticated training and that are cheap in terms of implementation and maintenance. Therefore, these systems are being preferred to EMR making its implementation both in private and public hospitals difficult. As McLeod explains, EMR requires an integrated system. Many governments and private hospital administrations anticipate many problems with adopting an integrated system. Therefore, they fear implementing EMR and prefer working with the old system of manually recording on papers. Conclusion From the literature review, it is clear that EMR have various advantages over medical paper records in medical data protection. Various studies have shown that EMR are less susceptible to loss and damage. EMR also consume less time in accessing and retrieving medical data. The major advantage of EMR in data protection is that it is claimed to be accessible to many users at the same time. It is claimed that many people can access their medical data that they require without necessarily queuing in a hospital. This saves time and energy and gives enough time to healthy personnel, to attend to patients who need treatment urgently instead of wasting time in giving medical information. Future Work According to this review, it has been shown that it is extremely beneficial for the implementation of EMR in both public and private hospitals. However, the implementation process is still slow in many nations. Therefore, future studies should be carried out to give more information on the importance of EMR in relation to data protection. Further researches should be carried out to come up with solutions on how to overcome the existing challenges facing implementation of EMR. Governments should modify their medical policies to give the implementation of EMR in both public and private hospitals a priority. Works Cited Blumenthal, David and Glaser, John. Information technology comes to medicine. New Eng J Med, 2007, 356(24), 2527-2534 Coombs, Philip. The crisis in electronic government record keeping. A strategy for long-term storage. Library computing, 1999, 18(3), 196-202. Lim Chee Siang, Edmund et al. Electronic medical records management systems: An overview. Desidoc J. Lib Int. Technol, 2009, 29(6), 1-6. McDougall, John. Planning a head for your company security. Inform. Quar, 1989, 5(3), 17-19. McLeod, Julie. and Hare, Catherine. How to manage records in the e-environments. London: Routledge press, 2006. Print Parliamentary office of science and technology .Data protection and Medical Research, 2005, 235, 1-4. Sameer, Kumar and Krista, Aldrich. Overcoming barriers to electronic medical record (EMR) implementation in the US healthcare system: A comparative study. Health Informatics Journals, 2010, 16(4), 306-318. Sidorov, Jaan, H. It aint necessarily so: The electronic health record and the unlikely prospect of reducing health care cost. Affairs, 2006, 25(4), 1079-1085. Veronesi, James. Ethical issues in computerized medical records. Critical care nursing quarterly, 1999, 22(3), 75-80. Read More