Electronic Health Record (EHR) contains of the documentation of patient health information which is stored in digital format. Growing, dynamic and critical data of patient that recorded in EHR is the main problem in data preservation. Scott (2007) believes the issues that appear related to the information content are technological change, the ravages of time and decaying media. These issues have significant impact to data preservation including storage options, storage media, technology obsolescence, cost and scale. Furthermore, in relation with the issues, Blažiča et al. (2007) points out that it needs a stable framework that could ensure long-term data preservation which will prevent from the risk of losing data.
In the paper, Scott (2007) provides a variety of potential solutions including strategy and policy which required ensuring long-term access use of information. The kinds of solutions, such as data migration, extensibility, data refreshing, emulation, data filtering, and backward compatibility, are proposed in order to ensure the data remain accessible with no loss of the integrity of information. However, these solutions or strategies that are provided by the author are not internationally accepted. He also mentioned that medical institutions need to take an initiative to implement patient health record with integrated data preservation strategies that ensure availability and integrity of information content.
Limited research was conducted in this paper which shows that data preservation is critical issue. Further work is required to understand the appropriate formats, standards or solutions that could internationally accepted and implemented regarding data preservation. Moreover, a stable framework of data preservation is important to be applied internationally with using future technology advances that could safe guarding the data and capable to be accessed in real time.
References:
Blažica, AJ, Klobucarb, T, & Jerman, BD 2007, ‘Long-term...