The following is an expert from the press release by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) about EMR data:
Hundreds of billions of gigabytes of health information are now being collected in electronic medical records, and three-quarters (76%) of more than 700 healthcare executives recently surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP agree that the secondary use of this information will be their organization’s greatest asset over the next five years. The data that could be mined from the health system can improve patient care, predict public health trends and reduce healthcare costs, but PricewaterhouseCoopers finds lack of standards, privacy concerns and technology limitations are holding back progress.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the healthcare industry won’t see the full value of investments in electronic medical records and other health IT investments until it finds secondary uses for the information being gathered. Yet 90 percent of executives surveyed feel the industry needs better guidelines about how health information can be used and shared, and 76 percent feel that national stewardship over, or responsibility for, the use of the health data should be regulated.
In its newly published report “Transforming Healthcare through Secondary Use of Health Data,” PricewaterhouseCoopers calls for public-private collaboration and a role for government in creating incentives for the private sector to collect, share and use health data; to establish standards; and to redefine technical architecture to allow interoperability.
[…] separate survey, including 700 healthcare executives, predicts that EMR data will be the health industry’s most valuable asset in the next five years. Only time will tell if this new tool is as effective and efficient as […]