Electronic Hand-Drafting and Picture Management System

Abstract

The Department of Health of Executive Yuan in Taiwan (R.O.C.) is implementing a five-stage project entitled Electronic Medical Record (EMR) converting all health records from written to electronic form. Traditionally, physicians record patients' symptoms, related examinations, and suggested treatments on paper medical records. Currently when implementing the EMR, all text files and image files in the Hospital Information System (HIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) are kept separate. The current medical system environment is unable to combine text files, hand-drafted files, and photographs in the same system, so it is difficult to support physicians with the recording of medical data. Furthermore, in surgical and other related departments, physicians need immediate access to medical records in order to understand the details of a patient's condition. In order to address these problems, the Department of Health has implemented an EMR project, with the primary goal of building an electronic hand-drafting and picture management system (HDP system) that can be used by medical personnel to record medical information in a convenient way. This system can simultaneously edit text files, hand-drafted files, and image files and then integrate these data into Portable Document Format (PDF) files. In addition, the output is designed to fit a variety of formats in order to meet various laws and regulations. By combining the HDP system with HIS and PACS, the applicability can be enhanced to fit various scenarios and can assist the medical industry in moving into the final phase of EMR.