Metin Akay
| A Low Cost and Effective Electronic Medical Record System for Developing Countries |  |
| Metin Akay | |
| Professor, School of Biological and Health System Engineering, Ira Fulton School of Engineering–ASU, Tempe, Arizona, USA |
Abstract
Developing countries face a slew of health problems that threaten the lives of millions of people each day. However, without a proper system of organization, these problems are amplified by the fact that the doctors must waste their time and resources finding and organizing patient information in often chaotic paper based systems. This paper focuses on the proof of concept of creating an electronic medical records or EMRs that could be used in one of these nations. In this paper, we define what an EMR is, discuss some current electronic medical records used in developed as well as developing countries, and introduce the Alzheimer's Institute Database (AID). This database is currently being used at Banner Alzheimer's Institute (BAI). It is created in the FileMaker® program and is originally designed as an Alzheimer's database. However, it serves as a proof of concept for a low cost and effective implementation of a fully customizable EMR for developing countries due to the flexibility and customizability afforded by using this program.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Prof. Akay, who is currently a professor of Bioengineering at ASU, received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul Turkey in 1981 and 1984, respectively and a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University in 1990. He has played a key role in promoting the biomedical education in the world by writing several prestigious books and editing the Biomedical Engineering Book Series published by the Wiley and IEEE press. Prof. Akay is a recipient of the IEE EMBS Service Award, a IEEE Third Millennium Medal and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Early Career Achievement Award in 1997, the Young Investigator Award of Sigma Xi Society, Northeast Region in 1998 and 2000, is a fellow of Institute of Physics and IEEE and serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards of several international journals.
