Understanding Challenges and Solutions with Systemigrams: Application to Electronic Medical Record Systems

The medical field is becoming bigger and more complex in the 21st century, diseases both emergent and re-emergent are on the rise and are costing lives around the world. Evolution of many diseases has made people find a reason to seek medical care in healthcare centers. This has led to increased development of health care facilities as peoples’ urge to get quality diagnosis and treatment rises. However, in the past patients ended up waiting a long time in their efforts to obtain these services. These wait times were due to the lack of proper documentation and recording of the personal information. Hospitals and health centers had to hire an increased numbers of health practitioners to handle the paper work as patient populations increased. Due to the massive amount of issues experienced and the patient agony, healthcare professionals were prompted to develop fast, reliable and efficient methods of handling large amounts of data within a short time. The rise of digital technologies enables the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system to be utilized in the healthcare setting. This tool has revolutionized the whole spectrum of capturing and recording medical health data. Today, health care agencies and organizations can retrieve and store a patient’s personal health information where physicians can readily access this information from their offices. Therefore, EMR is the real time solution to the health information management problem and through it there will be an improved patient experience in terms of wait time, diagnosis, and treatment. However, there are some challenges that come with the system that should be addressed to ensure efficiency. After a systemic review of the literature, we have used a systemigram approach and modeled the current challenges of EMR implementation and the related solutions to EMR system adoption. The objective of this study is to provide a systems-thinking approach to better contextualize the role of EMR in the complex system of healthcare from a multi-stakeholder perspective