The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program, a competitive $3,500 scholarship, has been awarded to undergraduate student Vishal Gulati, a computer information systems major. Gulati will participate in a series of research workshops this summer while investigating the benefits and drawbacks of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) usage in response to the Affordable Care Act of 2010. The goal of this research is to find out how EMR improves the overall quality and efficiency of health care.
Through the digitization of a patient’s test results, vital statistics, and other medical records, EMR is considered as an effective tool to enhance health care performance and address the threat of rising national health care costs. The scope of the research will examine hospital-wide EMR, which covers general aspects such as admission and discharge, billing, insurance, and patient surveys. Based on the research findings, the research will further examine how the interaction between hospital-wide EMR and departmental EMRs contribute to improving the efficiency of healthcare. He will be presenting the research results at university undergraduate research day this fall.