Many of the healthcare organization these days are moving towards Electronic Medical Records (EMR) to prevent the patient data from any kind of physical misplacement. Going digital also saves them time and effort of when lookup to a certain data is required. The global scenario of EMR adoption has been quite healthy to date.

In 2001, Canada launched an initiative to modernize its ICT infrastructure in healthcare. By the time it was 2015, EHRs were created for 91% of Canadians, and 91,000 clinicians were using EHR (Electronic Health Record) systems in their work. This was a significant growth from 2014 when the number was 62,000.

England started a national initiative called the “National Plan for IT” (NPfIT) for modernizing its healthcare system in 2001. Summary Health Records (SCRs) were created for 54 million people (96% of the population) under this initiative.

90% of physicians in private practice use EHR systems in Germany. Keeping patient privacy on top, the initiative allows patients to hide or block any entry in the health record.

New Zealand has a distributed EHR system which has helped achieve HER adoption rate of 97%.

Most tertiary hospitals have started using EHRs in Korea. To enable the exchange of health information among the healthcare facilities, a nationwide health information exchange (HIE) platform is being built.

The United States is working on the adoption of EHR for quite some time. 76% of hospitals had adopted basic EHR systems in 2014 as per the data available, with 97% of the acute care hospitals following suit.

The figures will only grow bigger and better in 2018 and the coming years.