Miguel Ponce de Leon

I think the benefits are in cases where your medical records live in one hospital but you need to be treated at another.

I've known friends to be in a situation where treatment can't start because letters need to be sent and received before the request for data can happen.

Presumably, with electronic records, this isn't as much of a problem -- though it's a fair point to ask if a multi-billion software project is the right approach, where even a fax machine could probably speed things up by days.

Agreed that tech. change without human and procedural change will result in no change.

But I do think there is something to be said for simple tech. advancements in health care. I went to the doctor the other week for the first time in 15 years. I didn't know my blood group, my last blood test results, what my allergies were called, any drug issues I might have, the age at which I had had meningitis or if I had had German measles and so on.

Then there were all the non-medial, personal details, PSRI number, address, parent details, spouse details etc. that I had to provide. Also any medical history with my family and so on.

Most of the info I had to look up on my iPhone on the spot. Searching old emails, sending a quick message to my parents and fianceé etc.

This reminds me of those simple bracelets high-risk people used to wear. It had their major allergies and health problems listed on them in case of an emergency when the person was unable to communicate.

Pushing that idea forward might be worth something. A stick of memory I carry around with me that I can present to my doctor and that has all my relevant details on it. Maybe a simple display on it so that it doesn't require a reader and can be used on the spot in an emergency.

Then again I didn't see a single computer in the doctor's office I went too. It was all paper based.

@Brian White
Yes I agree, and just to add in this case I'd prefer to own/host my own EHR(s), thus allowing hospital A and hospital B to access my records off of my own hosted service. All that hospital A would have to do is instruct hospital B that it should access my record, hopefully a billion euros is not needed for this approach. In fact this is has made me look and I might go for OpenEHR http://www.openehr.org/home.html

@Paul M. Watson
Sounds like you're ready for Google Health https://www.google.com/health is there an app for that?

We are a little over two years into our EMR implementation and although we have had some growing pains, we are already reaping the rewards of having digital information. Not having to look for missing charts on a patient with an urgent problem (not to mention being able to view a patient's record from home!), drug-drug interactions, drug allergies...these are but a few of many advantages of having an electronic record. Once the novelty wears off, then maybe we will see some otherwise true improvements in the delivery of health care as you point out.