A compact electronic medical record system for regional clinics and health centers in China: Design and its application

Abstract

Electronic medical record (EMR) system is more beneficial than a paper record in managing and maintaining the medical history of the patient. In China, EMR has been mainly utilized in urban general hospitals, while being considerably underdeveloped among the primary care medical providers such as local clinics and community hospitals, which accounts for over 93% of all medical institutions in China. Small-scale clinics are incapable of distinguishing the complicated disease classification because of the limited medical facilities and usually there is no in-house patient. Therefore, the existing EMR systems are not suitable for small-scale health centers due to the complexity of system operations Here, we propose a compact EMR system targeting at primary care centers to fulfill the needs of small-scale clinics and facilitate clinical research. The proposed light-weighted EMR system features a simpler database structure, clear web page display, and bilingual language support in both English and Chinese. Preliminary data mining performed with the sample dataset indicates that the compact EMR system has the potential to be applied in the clinical research and medical service management.