Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an electronic data system for the entire healthcare sector from hospitals to medical specialists that is gaining ground in Denmark. It gathers information about each patient, and this is the core advantage of EHR, because in a given treatment situation it is not necessary to search for the patient's medical history. EHR thus provides a basis for the development of optimised decision support to the clinical staff, initially those in the emergency department.

A recently completed study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that EHR provides better quality in practice.

A project in Patient@home will now aim for a better use of the EHR system leading to an improved data utilisation within the healthcare sector in order to achieve shorter patient treatment periods and better home health visiting. The project will therefore also provide the necessary basis for quicker patient discharge.

Objectives and expected results

The project aims to improve the service to be coordinated by the health sector. As EHR offers the opportunity to all within the field of healthcare to access the patient's medical record, it is requested that uncertainties regarding facts be reduced and that double agreements with specialists be excluded in order to optimise the use of the system. In addition, EHR also facilitates optimized assistance in emergency situations. Likewise, the risk of reoccurrence may be reduced, as there exists only one accessible file, which means that it is fully updated when the reader wants to access it; simultaneously, it excludes the risk of  forms and papers being lost. It is more efficient to gather all information in a single file when retrieving medical data for use in the examination of possible trends and changes over time in the patient's condition.

Overall, the project will thus create greater efficiency in the healthcare sector.