EMR Market in India: Growth and Challenges

The electronic medical record (EMR) assists in hospital order management, hospital workflow management and security of the medical data. It assists the entire healthcare delivery process in reducing cost and maximizes the profit.

 

Introduction

The electronic medical record (EMR) is simply the electronic format of medical records. EMR stores various types of medical data. The data ranges from medical history, prescriptions, drug allergies to the patients hospital service bills and more. The currently used paper based system is insufficient, ineffective and involves high cost of maintenance. On the contrary, EMR has several advantages like easy data recovery, portability, collaboration etc.

EMR assists doctors in making effective medical decisions with ease. In addition, EMR helps the service providers to effectively gather, maintain and recover patient’s medical information with the help of hospital information system (HIS). Along with managing the medical data, EMR assists in hospital order management, hospital workflow management and security of the medical data. It assists the entire healthcare delivery process in reducing cost and maximizes the profit.

 

Advantages

Large hospitals which have implemented and integrated the EMR to the core functions of the hospitals are realising the benefits. The streamlined process reduces or blocks the revenue leaks across the value chain. The long-term usage of EMR will lead to reduction in cost by reducing the administrative expenditure and increase in data accuracy.

With help of EMR, Doctors are able to treat the patients better with easy and accurate data accessibility. The collection of clinical data at the point of care enhances the efficiency and improves the data quality. The pharmaceutical companies and regulatory authorities use the collected data to improve the post marketing surveillance PMS of drugs. The patients receive better and greater reimbursements. In summary, EMR reduces revenue leaks, increases patient satisfaction and increases the efficiency of the process through technology.

 

Market Barriers

Although EMR has tangible positive outcomes, the adoption rate has been low. The market comprises handful of hospitals using EMR. The usage of EMR is limited to corporate hospitals in the various metro cities of India. The known hospital chain Fortis and Apollo have been using EMR in a few of their hospitals.

In comparison to developed nations, the adoption of EMR in India has drastically low. The low adoption rate is due to several gaps existing from the doctors to EMR vendors.

• The lack of awareness about the benefits of EMR is the largest perceived barrier. The prevailing low awareness about the advantages of EMR among the small and medium scale healthcare service providers is limiting the adoption rate.
• The resistance in acceptance of the product new and novel information technology platform impedes the adoption. Doctors who are the basis of healthcare service are defiant about EMR. This is primarily due to lack of compatible technology available in the market. Additionally, the EMR necessitates the use of computers by the doctors. Along with doctors, the stakeholders operating within a hospital are defiant in changing to the EMR.
• The high cost of implementation increases capital requirement. This is beyond in reach of the small medium scale hospitals. The capital intensive EMR will add to the healthcare service providers’ financial burdens. The fragmented Indian healthcare market that does not have a steady revenue and cash flow might view that capital burden as a risk. 
• The implementation process of time that negatively influences the ongoing workflow in any hospital. The vendors implement the various modules of EMR in phases. This implementation process affects the ongoing workflow in the hospital. 
• Lack of user-friendly interface adoption. The complicated EMR interfaces discourage the technological defiant doctors in adoption. Additionally, the EMR are inadequate to capture the entire data gathered by the doctors.
• The vendors lack domicile knowledge in healthcare. This results in development of EMR with various gaps. Technology being the primary competence of the vendors, they tend to develop products that highly are incompetent. The gap existing between the information technology and healthcare needs to be bridged by vendors to develop effective EMR products.

 

Future

The vendors need to take a holistic view of healthcare delivery while developing the EMR products. The existing demand supply gap in the market should bridged by better products and educating the doctors. The vendors are evolving at a greater rate in product development. The demand supply gap will steadily close due to the initiatives by vendors. They are designing better user-friendly products for doctors and providing better maintenance support for existing EMR products. The awareness among the medical fraternity will increase due to the aggressive promotion by vendors. The medical community may actively accept the new web based EMR tools.

This content was provided by eprobe Research Private Limited. Visit their website at www.eproberesearch.com.