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Electronic Health Records and the Archival Question: Shared Responsibility as a Panacea

Authors:
Mehluli Masuku

Keywords: electronic health records; long term preservation; shared responsibility.

Abstract:
Literature on the benefits of Electronic Health Records (EHR) across the health sector abounds. However, as all the hype about EHRs revolutionizing healthcare, there is not a commensurate discourse on the archival question in the era of EHRs. As EHRs are being hailed and hyped, an archival dilemma of such systems is looming. The archival question is about the long-term availability of EHRs as archives versus the traditional custodial roles of archival institutions. Through an argumentative approach, the paper argues that due to their complexities, EHRs need not be transferred to archival institutions but rather require a distributed custody strategy where archival institutions allow healthcare facilities and vendors to retain and preserve EHRs to ensure that their EHR systems guarantee long term preservation of records generated by such systems (as archivally deemed fit), and that healthcare facilities implement and maintain archivally compliant EHRs archives. In the process, the distributed custody will ensure that archival institutions promote the availability of the record for now and the future by collaborating with healthcare facilities as an archival protector whilst the custody of the EHR remains with the healthcare provider. For this approach to work, archival laws need to be reviewed in order to reflect and cope with the new realities and address current challenges presented by EHRs. It is suggested that archivists, health IT experts and vendors start viewing EHRs not merely as systems from which archival health records will be extracted at a later stage, but as health records in their own right, that need to be treated as archives, as they are resident in the systems.

Pages: 63 to 67

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2025

Publication date: October 26, 2025

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2519-8491

ISBN: 978-1-68558-312-5

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from October 26, 2025 to October 30, 2025