Integrating electronic health records with medical evidences databases: a literature review

By facilitating access to information and improving data quality, electronic health records (EHR) are expected to achieve better quality in the treatment of patients than paper-based systems. Another way that information technology is expected to improve patient assistance is by supporting evidence-based practice, in which the health professionals are able to access evidence databases containing synthesized and appraised medical literature. Nevertheless, these two uses of health information technology are usually disjoint, since there is a large semantic distance between bibliographic classification headings and clinical terms used in health records. This study offers a review on efforts to integrate EHR and evidence databases, a critical step towards the integration of efficient clinical decision support systems.