| | September 20188By Damodar Mantri, Director - IT & BPE, Dr. Reddy's LaboratoriesHeadquartered in Hyderabad, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories is a multinational pharmaceutical company offering a wide range of products and services such as APIs, custom pharmaceutical services, generics, biosimilars, and differentiated formulations, mainly in the areas of gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, diabetology, oncology, pain management, and dermatology.T he first step is to know the difference; EHR stands for Electronics Health Records, and EMR stands for Electronics Medical Records. Every industry will tend to develop the internal jargon which is different from the general public understanding or usage. Similarly, the EHR and EMR is often a mix usage. The professionals or key players in the field use the same lingo which is easy to understand, and at the same time, general public need not learn all the fields' vocabulary, and hence this mix. This topic is related to healthcare industry, where many professionals either in medical practices or in Pharma science use the term EHR vs. EMR. The interchange usage of EHR with EMR or vice versa will definitely change the intended in communication.EMR: As mentioned above, EMR stands for Electronic Medical Records ­ essentially, the digital versions of paper records/charts of a patient maintained at doctors' or a diagnostics office. This medical information of a patient helps the doctors to diagnose and give treatment with appropriate drug dosage. In early days, medical information by clinicians was focused on diagnosis and treatment, which is generally known as patients' overall health. The term used as `Health' got mixed with Medical record. In contrast, the term `Health' refers to patients' overall health situation and not just medical data that is stored in diagnostic lab test results or clinical records. The key benefits of EMR are helping the physicians to keep a track on data over a period of time and identify the patients' needs on follow-up visits, check-ups, screening, and flipping the medication. EMR also helps doctors get a quick glance on patients' basic vitals such as blood pressure/sugar and weight. The EMR enables to get a better view of practice and how it is doing on treated patients. This data is also an input to the industry on the drug molecule.The down side of these electronic medical records is on data sharing. Medical Data of a patient cannot be shared out of office, but rather can be used only for internal purpose. However, if a general physician is referring the patient to a specialist or super specialist for further treatment of pa-tient, it can be shared via hard copy or an email. Similarly, after the specialist visit and treatment, the patient's delta medical records need to get updated back in the clinic. At the end, we can see how the EMR if aligned with EHR will help the industry in the current context of health care evolution. EHR: EHR - Electronic Health Records contains all the data of EMR. EHR are collective medical information of all health sources which include multiple physicians, hos-pitals and all patients. The benefits of EHR are that the entire data is on electronic mode rather than on paper, which is more vulnerable for information leak especially during sharing. If the data is on electronic layer, the access IN MY OPINIONEHR & EMR:KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
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