Electronic Health Record

An electronic health record is a system that replaces conventional paper medical charts and electronically records / manages patients' medical records, test results, prescription history, allergy information, and so on. In Japan, in the 2020s, the adoption rate at large hospitals has exceeded 90%, and adoption is also advancing at clinics.

QR codes work together with electronic health records to help make medical settings more efficient. Scanning the QR code printed on a patient's wristband instantly opens that patient's page in the electronic health record. When administering medication, "three-point authentication" is used: the three codes, namely the staff ID of the person administering it (such as a nurse), the patient's wristband, and the drug label, are read in order and matched against each other. This prevents wrong-patient errors / wrong-drug errors / missing records of the person who administered it, all at once. If any of the three points does not match, the device issues a warning, and if they match, the action remains in the electronic health record as a record of "who / to whom / what" was administered.

Prescriptions are also being converted to QR codes. If the contents of a prescription issued by a doctor are stored in a QR code and scanned at the pharmacy, transcription errors from manual entry can be eliminated. QR code prescriptions in Japan use the standard of JAHIS (Japanese Association of Healthcare Information Systems Industry), so the data format is unified between medical institutions and pharmacies.