In the January 2014 issue of Le Médecin du Québec, Guy Paré, Canada Research Chair in Health Information Technology, conducted a survey of Quebec GPs in 2013 to find out how they felt about EMRs. Of the 42% who used an EMR, about a third felt that they improved care and made their practice more efficient. The others were either neutral about EMR benefits or felt they brought little advantage. Paré found that enthusiasts were likely to have used EMRs longer than the others, allowing them to discover and become comfortable with more functionalities. However, the EMRs themselves often fall short as they don’t capture granular data and therefore can’t be sorted (say by patients with a chronic condition) or alert GPs to abnormal test results. EMRs do, however, enable GPs to catch up on their paperwork away from the office.

See Guy Paré’s contribution to HIF case studies on the implementation of HIT in home telemonitoring for COPD and patient flow in hospital.