Electronic health records have been an immense value add in boosting patient engagement and continuity of care for organizations servicing healthcare. A positive collaboration between care providers and care seekers giving the users 'direct' access to their health data encouraging selfmanagement thereby allowing them to make better informed decisions*¹. The suite of features offered along with interoperability between departments like laboratory and pharmacy has made healthcare delivery not only easy but also safe and secure, one of the key benefits of digitizing a paper-based process*¹. Electronic health records have revolutionized and "transformed the landscape of healthcare delivery" to manage and store patient information softly on the cloud*².

History
The early open use of EHR as electronic medical records dated back in 1992 predominantly for inpatient and outpatient medical records, insurance claims processing and laboratory image scanning that resulted in cost and time saving for the organization*². This motivated healthcare managers to gradually digitize other aspects of management and care delivery including personalized dashboards for clinicians to take physician notes, medical encounter documentation, quicker access to laboratory results and e-prescriptions*².

The rapid increase in digitalization led to governments and policy makers rebranding medical records as electronic health records(EHR) to draw more meaningful use from the analysis of the large numbers of medical data available on the go improving decision making and clinical analysis outcomes*². By 2015, government agencies and larger healthcare organizations began mass implementing EHR's into their operations with expansions in newer functionalities to integrating location specific insurance policies, government regulations, billing, payments and the advent of a read-only patient portal to display only relevant information with email communication and telehealth modules incorporated*².

Digital medical records
Medicine in 21^st century is largely online with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) modernizing the way healthcare is delivered to their care seekers including processing large data sets catering to more informed decision making, reduced medical errors and also in areas like imaging and diagnostics*³. Despite the wide range of benefits of EHR's over the years, challenges in implementation persist with growing datasets and the need for improved functionalities and specialty-based modules. Challenges in usage is one of the limitations that health tech companies face but proper configuration of specialty templates that replicate the paper-based charts with ease is essential to bridge the gap in going paperless within the hospital.

An EHR with the general template that incorporates patient medical encounter with laboratory and pharmacy integration, billing and insurance that outlines and imitates the primary care practice processes comfortably. However, the need of the hour are specialty workflows for the different departments in healthcare.

Specialty templates
"EHRs enable coordinated care by providing a central repository for patient information. This allows healthcare providers from different disciplines and locations to access the same information which in turn can facilitate communication through features such as secure messaging and electronic referrals, further enhancing collaboration among healthcare providers*⁴".

Technological advancements with the emergence of Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, the way healthcare is both perceived and delivered will change drastically*⁴. The ability to deliver more advanced clinical outcomes by identifying patterns and trends across large datasets will help care providers make more informed decisions and more organized treatment plans in much lesser turnover times*⁴. Introducing specialty EHR's will streamline workflows, automate many administrative processes thereby reducing the workload of human resources with efficient documentation deploying a code-based system for services and billing. An error free documentation process suited to the clinical workflow with role based dashboards will result in more time dedicated to patient care improving the quality of healthcare services and prevent information leakage between departments*⁵.

An EHR software that provides a combination of customized specialty features alongside generic features like e-prescription and billing systems integration is the right fit for your practice and a dedicated team with agastha works closely with our doctors and clients to provide the best output. One such example is our ophthalmology template where we have recreated the paper based medical encounter charts online, easy to use and secure on a cloud-based server.

Ophthalmology EHR's are more than just electronic medical records. They follow a customized template that mimics a patient encounter experience online, with the following features that make a patient visit to your eye doctor a hassle-free experience*⁶*⁷.

1. Clinician visit notes and refraction flowsheet
2. Diagnostic imaging & mobile integration
3. E-prescriptions and billing
4. Surgery scheduling with an internal communication line between nurses, technicians and doctors
5. Lens inventory management
6. User friendly patient portal

Overall, an intuitive dashboard specific to patients and clinicians that is regularly updated with information and tasks, where patient information can be added and viewed enabling chronic care management to be undertaken efficiently. Agastha's EHR allows care providers to access patients at different stages in ophthalmology care service and thereby reduce wait times and long queues. We work closely with the specialists and design a workflow, provide role-based training to the team and keep your system updated with state-of-the-art modules.

Electronic health records have transformed the healthcare and hospital industry by improving the quality of care and setting high standards for safety of data. It has been time and again emphasized that one of the major highlights of having your medical records stored online is easy accessibility instantly to deliver quality care in time. However, to realize its full potential, barriers to implementation irrespective of scale have to be managed alongside the growing demand for AI and ML capabilities being incorporated with specialty modules will sustain the use of electronic health records over a long time*⁴.