Electronic Health Record Portals Definition and Usage

Background

To better understand, the definition of EHR Portals it’s important to have a clear view of the technologies that support them. The first one are the Patient Portals, healthcare-related online applications that allow patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers (Weingart et al., 2006). EHR means a repository of patient data in digital form, stored and exchanged securely. It contains retrospective, concurrent, and prospective information and its primary purpose is to support continuing, efficient and quality integrated health care (Hayrinen, Saranto, & Nykanen, 2008). EHRs may include a range of data, such as, medical history, medication and allergies, immunization status, laboratory test results, radiology images, vital signs, personal statistics like age and weight, and billing information (Angst & Agarwal, 2009; Hayrinen et al., 2008). EHR Systems are the software platforms that physician offices and hospitals use to create, store, update, and maintain EHRs for patients (Angst & Agarwal, 2009). By definition an EHR Portal is a web based application that combines an EHR System and a Patient Portal, not only to enable patients to interact with their healthcare providers (schedule medical appointments, send messages to their physicians, request prescription refills online) but also to access their medical records and medical exams results (Angst & Agarwal, 2009; Tavares & Oliveira, 2014b; Weingart et al., 2006). Table 1 provides an overview of the definition, differences and communalities between EHR Portals and EHR Systems.