Investigation of patients’ access to EHR data via smart apps in Chinese Hospitals

BACKGROUND: Given that China has encouraged EHR usage in hospitals for more than a decade, patients’ access to their own EHR data is still not as widely utilized as expected. METHODS: We cultivated a survey with four categories and field interviews of measures to identify whether hospitals have already released EHR data to patients, inpatients or outpatients, the top EHR release contents and the most popular release software. RESULTS: Of the 1344 responding hospitals from 30 provinces nationwide, 41.37% of hospitals have already released their EHR data to patients, of which 97.12% are through smart apps. More than 91% of hospitals use WeChat, and 32.37% of hospitals developed their own standalone apps or use vendors’ apps. A total of 54.63% were released to both outpatients and inpatients, and the top release contents were all objective. A rough estimation is made that releasing EHR data to patients via smart apps may save the hospital 15.9 million RMB per year and patients 9.4 million RMB altogether. CONCLUSIONS: EHR data release is believed to bring both patient and hospital cost savings and efficiency gains but is still considered spontaneous and requires legal support and government regulation.