Design and Implementation of Online Electronic Medical Record System in Ethiopia
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Date
2021-08-15
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
An Electronic Medical Record system is an application that is a complete repository of patient‟s medical documents which contains patients' medical history, a summary of all their visits. This information can be shared across different health care organizations. Recently, electronic medical records are considered as a key to increasing quality care. It improves the accuracy medical records, reduces data replication, support fast data retrieval and decreases the risk of lost paper works.
Due to the presence of multiple health care service providing organizations, patients move from one medical institution to the other in need of better service and from place to place due to work and other life circumstances. Because of that maintaining patients' lifetime medical record becomes much difficult. Especially, in a developing country like Ethiopia, patient medical record keeping is done manually. This makes medical records susceptible to damage and loss and difficulty of retrieval when needed.
We employed the waterfall development approach to develop the Online Electronic Medical Record system. First, we studied the existing system through observation and revision of documents collected from different medical institutions. Based on the collected data we prepared a system analysis and design document. Then we developed the Online Electronic Medical Record following the system design document specifications.
Finally, an evaluation of the Online Medical Record system is conducted using a questionnaire involving 5 user categories and 10 voluntary participants from each user group. The result of the evaluation shown that the Online Electronic Medical Record System is easy to use, effective, accurate and help the professionals save their time.
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Keywords
Electronic Medical Record, Web Based Application, Electronic Health Record, Patient Management System, Health Information System