Barriers to proliferation of electronic medical records.

Background: Error reduction, quality improvement and lowering of cost can all be achieved through electronic integration of healthcare providers. Proliferation of standard electronic health records/ electronic medical records (EHR/EMR) software is an essential precursor of this integration. Proliferation of EHR/EMR software has not occurred in the United States.

Metcalfe's law predicts reduced power of Electronic Medical Record software.

Error reduction, quality improvement and lowering of cost can all be achieved through electronic integration of health care providers. Despite the existence of clinical computing software for decades, meaningful linkage between health care providers has not occurred. We hypothesize that a major reason is reduction in network value through incompatible clinical software among hundreds of health care entities.