Design a novel electronic medical record system for regional clinics and health centers in China

Abstract

In this study a novel electronic health information system that integrates the functions of medical recording, reporting and data utilization is presented. The goal of this application is to provide synchronized operation and auto-generated reports to improve the efficiency and accuracy for physicians working at regional clinics and health centers in China, where paper record is the dominant way for diagnosis and medicine prescription. The database design offers high efficiency for operations such as data mining on the medical data collected by the system during diagnosis. The result of data mining can be applied on inventory planning, diagnosis assistance, clinical research and disease control and prevention. Compared with electronic health and medical information system used in urban hospitals, the system presented here is light-weighted, with simpler database structure, self-explanatory webpage display, and tag-oriented navigations. These features makes the system more accessible and affordable for regional clinics and health centers such as university clinics and community hospitals, which have a much more lagging development with limited funding and resources than urban hospitals while they are playing an increasingly important role in the health care system in China.