Improving cardiovascular outcomes using electronic health records.

Improving quality of care through the enhanced use of digital technologies is becoming an increasingly primary focus of the health care industry in general and cardiovascular (CV) medicine in particular. The recent rapid adoption of electronic health records (EHR) has the potential to improve the management of CV disease by removing variability and assuring at least consideration of guideline-recommended care and appropriate use criteria. This can lead to improved cardiac outcomes at all phases of care; beginning with the automated identification of patients who are at increased risk, implementing evidence based medicine for primary CV prevention, using online decision support tools for acute management, and, possibly most importantly, by connecting the health care provider and the patient through open accessibility to their EHR. The widespread use of EHR is the dawn of a new era where evidence based guidelines can be seamlessly translated to patient care and where patients are actively involved in their own health. As transformative as this will be, it is important to recognize that we are currently experiencing only the very earliest potential of the EHR in improving CV outcomes.