BUSINESSAmericans trail much of Europe in adopting electronic medical recordsAmerican doctors use the Internet and computers more than European doctors, but are behind Europe in technology use for patient records.By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Sept. 2, 2002. American primary care physicians are ahead of many of their general practitioner counterparts in the European Union in using computers, the Internet and handheld devices. But they lag noticeably behind in use of electronic medical records, according to a survey by Harris Interactive. The survey also found that while American medical usage of information technology devices outpaced the European Union average, it was lower than the top European countries. For example, 94% of U.S. physicians use computers in their practice, and 79% use the Internet or an online network compared to 80% and 61% averages for the 15 countries in the European Union. But 100% of doctors in Finland and the Netherlands use computers and an online network. While the number of American doctors using computers, handheld devices, online networks and Web sites is greater than the European Union average, they are far behind doctors in Scandinavian and northern European countries in using electronic medical records, said Humphrey Taylor, chair of Harris Interactive's Harris Poll. According to Harris, American physicians' use of electronic medical records matches Greece's (17%), but trails every other European Union country except Portugal (5%), France (6%) and Spain (9%). Throughout the European Union, an average of 29% of general practitioners use EMRs.
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Copyright 2002 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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