Moreover, such records can potentially contain a complete health history, regardless of where or when care was previously rendered. This is a distinct advantage for a mobile population, which customarily receives health services from many different sources. Second, electronic medical records can be displayed in forms that more clearly highlight important details, compared to one or more paper files of uncertain organization. Both benefits have obvious utility in emergency situations. Textbook models of medical technology development envision a linear, orderly progression from innovation to evaluation to diffusion.
Practitioners find new indications for use after release, for which no prior testing is performed.
Rare side effects and contraindications appear in larger populations that go undetected in small scale trials. Long-term effects emerge, but only with the passing of many years. Such epidemiological monitoring allows better planning of on-going health resource needs, as well as the early identification of new, previously unknown threats. As for clinical research, aggregations of data from EMRs could provide an effectively universal regime of population surveillance at a relatively modest cost.