Alex Adamopoulos, Exigen Services’ executive vice president and COO, provides guest commentary for ADVANCE For Health Information Executives’ Politics of Healthcare Blog on the potential hurdles of large scale EMR development in the United States.

“Pulling together as a nation to overhaul an aging, often paper-based medical records system is long overdue. We can all agree it will create jobs, pump money into various industries and make managing a fast-growing patient base much easier. With great potential comes great risk – in this case, risk of stretching an ailing health care IT industry to the breaking point. Legacy systems abound, support for decade's-old central infrastructure no longer exists, and facilities must consider increased privacy and regulatory measures.”