One Nation, One EHR –The Direct Project

The essence of Health Information Exchange (HIE) lies in easily accessible health information to improve the quality of care delivered by the healthcare community. Complicated formats intrinsic to many EHR systems are generally counterproductive to this basic nature of HIEs and can prove to be a hindrance against delivering quality care. So the natural question arises, what can be done to remove such blockades in the inherent design of these EHRs to facilitate their intended requisites? A popular solution proposed to answer this query is to develop a holistic system of sharing health information between healthcare providers and other concerned entities on a national level within the healthcare continuum.

With the expected level of complications in developing such a system, a lot of critics would say that the notion of a national EHR system is farfetched and would dismiss the idea altogether. Their objection would be justified if we considered the amount of time invested into the development and implementation of health information interoperability throughout the nation and still not attaining the desired results. Not even a single developed country so far has managed to go a hundred percent electronic with their clinical documentation. [...]