Gottesman, O., Kuivaniemi, H., Tromp, G., Faucett, W. A., Li, R., Manolio, T. A., … & Brilliant, M. (2013). The electronic medical records and genomics (eMERGE) network: past, present, and future. Genetics in Medicine, 15(10), 761-771. eMERGE is a consortium funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute to develop methods and best practices for utilizing electronic health records in genomic research. The authors assert that the first phase of the project was meant to enable electronic phenotyping, conduction of GWAS, and exploration of various implications of the study. The success of the first phase led to the second phase. Apart from phenotyping and network-wide studies, the second phase looked at specific genetic conditions like hemochromatosis and development of a framework for returning results. The authors conclude by saying that eMERGE has been largely successful and has led to the belief that Electronic Medical Records are a powerful tool in genomics and informatics. Indeed, eMERGE may just be the future in record keeping and perhaps handle new challenges that past electronic medical records (EMR) system have faced. The article also shows that the application of EMR is vast and may be applied to different disciplines in nursing.
Springate, D. A., Kontopantelis, E., Ashcroft, D. M., Olier, I., Parisi, R., Chamapiwa, E., & Reeves, D. (2014). Clinical Codes: An online clinical codes repository to improve the validity and reproducibility of research using electronic medical records. PloS one, 9(6), e99825. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0099825
The authors start by emphasizing the importance of clinical codes in medical research and showing the rate at which recent studies that were done using electronic health records failed to provide the clinical codes for their studies and thus their studies were not valid. In order to help future researchers to validate their studies, the authors looked to build an online repository where users of electronic medical records can upload and download clinical codes. The authors conclude by asserting that this would help in comparison of diseases, replication of databases, and in tracking changes. As an emerging trend in nursing, this article offers an opportunity for medical practitioners to have an integrated Electronic Medical Records System, which would offer better and secure record keeping. Such a repository would see medical facilities share information on how best to deal with different healthcare challenges based on different cases patients present globally.