Key observations in terms of management of electronic health records from a mHealth perspective

Abstract

The article is a narrative review that briefly describes some of the recent advances in healthcare data management that will have positive effect on mHealth. The advances described in this article are in fact innovation introduced by the author to the field of data management with respect to electronic health records. The research delineated is transdisciplinary in nature and will potentially have positive impact on healthcare outcomes. Also, the article illustrates the necessity for an out of the box thinking approach to improve mHealth while discussing the current impending issues related to data incompleteness of electronic health records and the much-needed decision support systems for mHealth. It is to be noted that most of the electronic health records are now accessed by patients through mobile devices. These mobile devices will run as clients while much of the heavy computing is performed using servers. Here it is important to discuss some of the important technologies and methods used for decision making. The article attempts to present a discussion on how this myriad of intertwining technologies support this decision making with respect to electronic health records. More importantly it is these processes that assist in decision making and efficiency for both mHealth users and providers. In this respect, the article first provides insights on the complexities of decision making involved with electronic health records. This is followed by a discussion on the problem of data incompleteness of electronic health records. Finally, the author provides some insights into the gravity of the problem of data incompleteness in terms of revenue loss/gain for healthcare providers.

mHealth on the periphery

“…Gurupur ( 2 ) addresses the issue of data incompleteness, one component of clinical documentation adequacy, from the perspective of scoring actual electronic records against a concept map of “an ideal complete electronic health record.” This issue of incomplete documentation is considered with regard to one of our key concerns—improved reimbursement for services provided—as well as contributing to decreased risk for medical errors, reduced staffing requirements, and fewer treatment delays. He provides a diagram of the value propositions for key stakeholders for documentation completeness—CEOs, health information managers, risk managers, CFOs and CIOs, and clinical providers.…”