If from the standpoint of hospital management the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) ensures greater agility, safety, efficiency and cost savings, for the Brazilian health system the gains are also immense. Especially for the Health Care Networks (RAS) – healthcare institutions that share a common goal and mission: providing continuous and integrated care to a given population, at the right time and place, in a humanized way.

Despite not being widely disseminated yet, the EPR solutions are a reality in large part of the private healthcare sector, but they need to advance in public health. For generating convenience, agility and safety for health professionals, the implementation of electronic patient records across the country would mean a big step toward improving the quality of healthcare provided to patients.

Capable of integrating the information of all services and units of the public health system, a EPR system can reduce the number of archived papers, decrease the occurrence of errors, avoid redundancy of procedures and increase service productivity and user satisfaction. Furthermore, the stored data are available in real time and can be accessed from anywhere. The information, more legible than the handwritten patient records, are stored in the system, providing support to the process of retrieval, clinical studies and evaluations for the improvement of patients.

To help improve the healthcare quality, the EPR integrates the patient into the local health services, thus contributing to the optimization of public management. With the information of all Public Health Network services and units, it is possible to monitor the information and follow-up the situation and health history of citizens to then effectively control the application of public funds. A EPR in a healthcare network is essential for the rational organization of flow and counterflow of information, products and people. Without the EPR, the primary healthcare is hampered for not being able to exercise its role as a communication center, coordinating the service.