Electronic Health Record (EHR) Standards For India: A Beginning of Integrated Indian Healthcare System EHR Standards: A Beginning of Integrated Indian Healthcare

Abstract

In Indian healthcare system, patients visit several health providers, throughout their life span, right from sub-centre, community centre or primary health centre in rural setups, or a general practitioner in their local vicinity, to a government/private hospital or clinic at the district, city, state or central level. Health records get generated with every clinical encounter during these ambulatory, in-patient or emergency visits. However, most health records are either lost, or remain in the custody of healthcare providers and eventually get destroyed. There may be negligible to no health records maintained by private practitioners, at clinic setups and by rural healthcare setups. A typical Indian patient with varying literacy and awareness level usually does not retain his/her clinical documents either. Due to these reasons, health record of an Indian citizen is not available for more informed and integrated healthcare. Present care provider is oblivious of the patient's health condition and past medical history; his/her allergies, etc. for a more informed care planning today. Also, important clinical data is not available for research and for reference to aide in clinical decision support. Study of disease trends and statistical analysis of clinical nature also suffers. Due to these reasons, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India has released Electronic Health Record (EHR) standards for India to enable integrated healthcare delivery for Indian citizens. The article describes and discusses the EHR standards for a simple understanding of all.