Beyond individual patient care: enhanced use of EMR data in a primary care setting

With the introduction of electronic medical record (EMR) systems into the primary care sector the collected data become available for purposes beyond individual patient care, i.e. chronic disease management, prevention and clinical performance evaluation. However EMR systems are primarily designed to support clinical tasks, and physicians focus on the treatment of individual patients. In this paper we follow the path of a community health centre (CHC), tracking the changes that came about with the secondary usage of EMR data, and presenting some of the lessons learned.