Electronic medical records: Taking young generations of patients and physicians through innovative technology and change management

Abstract

Billions of dollars have been invested in developing, implementing, and promoting an electronic medical records system that Canadian physicians (EMR) and patients (electronic personal records) would use to manage healthcare files. Barriers have been identified in the literature and there is a wide range of them. The main research objectives of the study aimed to assess EMR adoption by physicians based on their age and to determine the preferences of patients in using the EMR system. Secondary data were tapped from the National Physicians' Survey respondents encompassing close to 10,000 physicians from across Canada, 4,000 from Ontario, and 316 from Northern Ontario as well as 325 patients who were directly surveyed to obtain primary data. Significant differences were found across geographical jurisdictions and age strata in terms of electronic adoption by physicians and patients. The general trend leads to younger physicians using more exclusively electronic records than their senior colleagues do.