De-identified patient data is health information from a medical record that has been stripped of all “direct identifiers”—that is, all information that can be used to identify the patient from whose medical record the health information was derived. According to the Health Insurance Portability and...

As Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems become more widespread, issues of poor design, and the consequences of that, take on a higher profile. This is especially true in hospital systems, which often are built using legacy, locally-installed client/server technology, geared to being self-contained (rather than...

Adoption of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) by physicians – particularly by primary care physicians – has been a challenge, for a number of reasons. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has been charged with encouraging physicians to adopt Electronic Health Record...

Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) is one of the leading features of an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, as envisioned by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT. It is a Meaningful Use criteria, both for hospital-based EHRs and for ambulatory EHRs...

The process for defining how Electronic Health Records (EHRs) will be certified, in order that physicians can “ meaningfully use certified EHRs” to access ARRA/HITECH stimulus incentive bonuses, is becoming clearer step-by-step.