Usage of Electronic Health Record (ehr)

Starting from the scientist’s imagination of “a living machine”, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has now become a part of our daily lives and had a major influence on changes in all fields. Referring to data presented by International Data Corporation (IDC), AI systems and cognitive computing are estimated to earn up to $ 12.5 billion in 2017, and they are predicted to continue along with the increase of massive use of AI (Galanos, 2018). Electronic Health Record (EHR), longitudinal electronic records containing patient health information, is one of the examples AI application in health care sector. EHR was developed by American Healthcare System to help them manage all clinical data including; demographic data, medications history, immunisations, until laboratory data from all of the hospitals in the US. It was designed to replace the old Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system into a sharing data system, both as cloud-based or location based format. EHR is considered as an effective tool to share the data beyond all healthcare providers due to its ability to gather all data in a real-time data processing. The history behind health record system began at 1,600-3,000 BC when ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions were translated into the use of medical records. The increasing awareness on the documentation of a patient’s medical history influenced health care practitioner to invent a paper-based system.

Later on, the development of computer technology and scientific research about algorithm influenced the change of medical record systems into a computerised system. Using a special algorithm, EHR provides us with high accuracy information which is enormously important not only for healthcare practitioners but also for the health insurance providers. Further, EHR is functioned by the government as a tool to predict healthcare expenditure in the future (Evans, 2016). As the new form of technoscience, EHR shows us that science and technology are interconnected. Although EHR was resulted by a desire for social control from different actors, both science and technology are interacting to achieve one goal, providing a comprehensive health care service. As said by Sismondo (2010)” .. a successful piece of technoscience, is the result of managing all of the actors and their associations so that they can contribute toward a goal.” EHR brings a new era of human works. It introduces new types of work that have not yet been looked at or even not existed yet. One of the examples, EHR spurring the growth of the new technologies called electronic health applications (e-health).

E-health includes mobile devices application allows patients to collect and use the data to monitor their health condition. They use it as a mutual relationship between patient and healthcare practitioner. EHR changes behavioural health screening. It is the examples of social interaction between human and non-human (knowledge discoveries and techno-social evolution) actors to achieve the desired goal. EHR implied the application of Actor-Network Theory, in which state that in every existing thing in the worlds were resulted from of constantly shifting networks of both human and non-human interaction (Sismondo, 2010).