Electronic Health Data Holds Potential to Hasten NDRs

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Electronic Health Data Holds Potential to Hasten NDRs
EMR can help pharmaceutical companies reduce research costs and accelerate time to market for new drugs.

Callum Bir

The author is Director, Life Sciences, Global Industry Business Unit, Oracle Corporation, Asia Pacific and Japan

Electronic Medical Records (EMR), software that allows the creation, storage, editing and retrieval of a patient's data on a computer, and to a lesser extent Electronic/Personal Health Records (EHR/PHR) have been making strides around the world. Many hospitals or hospital clusters have to some extent either implemented EMRs or are in the process of doing so. Many countries around the region are also looking at putting in place the infrastructure that would support EHR/PHR as well. Countries like Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong have made significant progress in both these areas and there will be more to come.

As exciting, but often less reported, however, are the potential benefits such initiatives can deliver to the life sciences and biomedical industry. There are significant crossover benefits that take aim at some of the industry's most vexing challenges-more effective and efficient identification and recruitment of clinical trial participants and the ability to simultaneously capture clinical trial data from the electronic health record to decrease the costs of clinical trials, resulting in faster time-to-market for new drugs.

(Read More: http://biospectrumindia.ciol.com/content/BioTools/10809101.asp)