Creating content modules for Chinese EHR documents and their trial implementation in Wuwei City.

Numerous and diverse paper-based health record documents are currently used in China, which are not only different from each other but are also inconsistent with national regulations. If these documents are made to be structured and electronically available, the health records information can be processed by computers to promote a shareable electronic health record (EHR) across organizations. As such, this work was intended to develop a set of content modules to be employed as reusable building blocks for converting the paper-based health records to structured EHR documents. Therefore, in this study, we developed 77 content modules based on the documents of national specifications and implemented them to Wuwei City as a trial. According to the EHR requirements of Wuwei, we added two new content modules in addition to the 77 existing content modules. We then successfully established an EHR system based on the new content modules in combination with the original content modules. This paper could contribute to the construction of structured Chinese EHR documents and provide some experiences as a reference for building EHR systems.