Utilities of Electronic Medical Records to Improve Quality of Care for Acute Kidney Injury: Past, Present, Future

Abstract

Electronic health records (EHRs) have become an integrated part of medical practice in most clinical settings around the world. Appropriate use of EHR potentially improves patient care while poorly designed EHR can cause harm. In recent years, EHR has been used as a platform to identify patients who have or may develop acute kidney injury (AKI). The benefit of using EHR for a rule-based classification of AKI has been controversial. While some reports indicate improvement in the process of care provided to AKI patients, other studies do not show significant changes in the outcomes. Utilities of EHR in AKI should go beyond a rule-based detection of the AKI as a syndrome. There are several different potential applications for such tools including AKI forecasting models and clinical decision support systems, to improve the quality of care and outcome of the patients with AKI. Both clinical and investigative interest in the field is growing among clinicians, administrators and scientists. Appropriate utilization of intelligent EHR can provide timely, appropriate and accurate information to the clinicians in order to improve the quality of care provided to critically ill patients and assist investigators to generate new knowledge. In this review paper, we discuss the past and present states of EHR role in the field of AKI. We also share our views regarding the future potentials and directions of these devices.