IT Downtime – A Cultural Shift

Introduction

According to Dr. Weed the four main goals of electronic health record include 1) immediate access to patient data 2) access to data from multiple care episodes 3) standardized data organization and 4) help hospitals plan and organize capacity and patient flow. There is an ongoing realization of benefits of Electronic Health Records (EHR) as well as other associated issues such as unplanned downtime. Conventional Information Technology (IT) departments have multiple back-up options to ensure workflow and data safety during downtime. However, EHRs are yet to achieve that level of downtime safety. There have been many reported incidents of EHR downtime, which has gained attention due to inconveniences caused in the workflow. This study outlines the measures taken at University Health Network, a large academic research hospital at Toronto, Canada.