Medical institutions are rapidly moving toward electronic medical records (EMRs) because of regulatory pressures and perceived benefits in efficiency and quality of patient care. The federal stimulus bill of 2009 included $36 billion to incentivize medical institutions to adopt EMRs, and President Obama has declared it a goal that every patient have an EMR by 2014.1
Corresponding Author: Boadie W. Dunlop, MD, Emory University School of Medicine, 1256 Briarcliff Rd NE, Bldg A, Third Floor, Atlanta, GA 30322 (bdunlop@emory.edu).
Financial Disclosures: Dr Dunlop reports having received research support from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cephalon, Evotec, Forest, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Ono Pharmaceuticals, Organon, Pfizer, Takeda, Wyeth, and the National Institute of Mental Health. He reports having performed consulting with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cephalon, Digitas Health, Imedex LLC, MedAvante, and Pfizer.
Funding/Support: Support for this work was provided by National Institutes of Health grant 1KL2-RR025009.
Role of the Sponsor: The National Institutes of Health had no role in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
Additional Contributions: I thank John Banja, PhD, Section on Ethics, Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Center for Ethics at Emory University, for his helpful critique of the manuscript. He received no compensation for his assistance.