The Electronic Medical Record at Mayo Clinic

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Electronic records replaced the color-coded paper records in 2005. The paper records of more than 6.2 million Mayo patients, dating back to 1907, continue to be a valuable asset for medical research.

Collaboration is probably the most important characteristic of Mayo Clinic — the ability of diverse specialists to work as a team to care for patients. And nothing is more important to collaboration than Mayo's medical record.

Nearly 100 years ago, Dr. Henry Plummer developed the concept of the "unit record," in which all of a patient's records reside in a single file that travels with the patient and is stored in a central repository. This simple system quickly became the standard for medical record keeping around the world. (Read about medical record history.)

Today, Mayo patient records are electronic, one of the largest such systems in the world. Everything related to a patient's care — physician notes, laboratory reports, surgical dictations, copies of correspondence, appointment schedules, X-rays, ultrasounds, CT and MRI scans, echocardiograms — is instantly available to Mayo caregivers via more than 16,000 computer terminals on Mayo's three campuses.

Mayo's electronic medical record (EMR) is more secure than the paper system, because electronic files can be viewed only by authorized users who are readily identifiable.

Mayo's EMR is critical to Mayo's ability to provide efficient, coordinated, safe and high-quality care. Researchers can also use the EMR to analyze large amounts of patient information more efficiently, speeding the application of new research findings to improve patient care. Read about the benefits of the EMR.

Mayo is working on a new set of technology initiatives to help extend the value of the patient records to improve patient care and drive further research to generate new knowledge. Read about Mayo's new model for managing medical information.

An average of 7.5 million transactions are processed between 8-9 a.m. Around the noon hour, this number jumps to 15 million transactions.