According to McDonald, Tang, and Hripcsak (2014), “An electronic health record (EHR) is a repository of electronically maintained information about an individual’s health status and health care, stored such that it can serve the multiple legitimate uses and users of the record”. Furthermore, the EHR comprises five functional components i.e., integrated view of patient data, clinician order entry, clinical decision support, access to knowledge resources and integrated communication and reporting support.
Firstly, it is imperative that the integrated view of patient data component contains all-inclusive information such as diverse data types, for example text, numbers, images and videos. This component has the ability to display and access patients’ demographics, operations, DICOM chest X-ray images, history, problems, medications, orders, notes, consults, discharge summary, and labs from one page (McDonald, Tang, & Hripcsak, 2014). With one click on the tab, extended information can be obtained. Moreover, the integrated patient …show more content…
While some EHRs provide a synopsis of diseases etc., on their resources, others provide an external Info button to the web. Here, physicians can access the web or databases to access in-depth health care information to further expand their knowledge on a specific topic. Examples of public knowledge resources include the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) PubMed and MedlinePlus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccines and international travel information, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) National Guideline Clearinghouse, and those created by commercial vendors such as UpToDate, Micromedex, and electronic textbooks (McDonald et al.,