Evaluation of Electronic Health Record in Iran

Majlis research centre studied the status of electronic health and electronic health record system for Iranian people.

According the MRC public relations, the office of communication and new technology of this centre studied the experiences of numbers of countries in the field of electronic health and added: the results of the study indicates that the selected countries of the study believe in necessity of the existence of an electronic health system in their society. To find this objective they used different approaches. For example, in United States the private sector developed the electronic health system and has a key role in this process. Other selected countries, such as Canada, Britain, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands have used top-down approach. In India, the approaches that is known as "the Mass" approach has been used by the competitiveness of private sector and eventually the participatory approach between private sector and the government is used in Canada.
Meanwhile, most selected countries considered some incentives for the people, physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies in order to expand electronic health.
Also, some countries set up rules to protect electronic health record and fast implementing the electronic health system (EHS). European Union has supported the researches for health information technology at least two decades. EU has used the local health networks and distributed electronic health card to support the EHS.
MRC added: The electronic health and electronic record was take note in Iran during 2001 and examined mainly by ministry of health and medical education and the organization of Iran social service. Some cases were repeated and it is far away to reach the expected objectives. Also there is no guarantee to reach the objectives because no specific institution or observers exist to support as electronic health trustee.
In other hand, lack of integrated standards for health systems (such as LIS, CIS, HIS and MIS) required the ministry of health to put the implementing of standards in their priority because hospitals, clinics and physicians can not practice in a network to exchange information unit without mentioned standards therefore, the electronic health record will be impossible.
Furthermore, implementing the EHS in most successful countries has been delegated to private sector. Despite the Article 44 of the Constitution, It is necessary to encourage private sector to implement EHS and to reach the HER & EHS targets by government assistance in Iran