ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Electronic Medical Records (EMR), which are defined for storing the health information of patients, and discusses the various standards of storing such information. EHRs are considered to be a summary of various EMRs which are generated during clinical encounters. EMRs contain only clinical data of a patient, whereas EHRs go beyond that to focus on the broader, total health of each patient. While an EHR contains the medical and treatment histories of patients, an EHR system may be built to contain information beyond standard clinical data and can be inclusive of a broader view of the information related to the healthcare facilities for the patients. OpenEHR provides technical specification for EHRs and EHR systems based on an object-oriented approach. The openEHR Foundation provides the specification of the reference model as a formal, logical definition of the information. Adoption of EHR standards is being accelerated in different countries.
