EMR (electronic medical record)
Also called electronic medical record.
The digital version of a clinician's paper chart: a patient's medical and treatment history kept within one practice.
Last updated
What it is.
An EMR is used by one clinic or practice to record diagnoses, treatments, notes and results for its own patients. ONC describes it as a digital version of the paper chart, used mainly for diagnosis and treatment within that practice.
An EHR goes further and is built to share data across providers. Many vendors use the two words loosely, so it is worth asking what a given system can actually send and receive.
Why it matters
Smaller practices, specialist clinics and vets often run an EMR rather than a large hospital EHR. Products for them may need to read from it, write to it or replace it, and each choice changes the build a lot.
In a product build
We start by listing what the customer's EMR can really do: API, file export, or nothing. That decides whether we integrate, sync on a schedule or build the record ourselves, and whether the product holds PHI that needs HIPAA safeguards.
Common mistakes.
- 01
Using EMR and EHR as the same thing in a scope, then finding the system cannot share data.
- 02
Planning a sync without agreeing which system is the source of truth for each field.
- 03
Forgetting that patients' records must be exportable when a practice changes systems.
Read the official text.
Primary sources this definition is based on.
- HealthIT.gov (ONC), EMR vs EHR: what is the difference?checked 2026-10-25
Work it out with a tool.
Related terms.
- EHR (electronic health record)A digital record of a patient's health and care that is built to be shared with other providers, so it can follow the patient.
- FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)A standard from HL7 for exchanging health data through modern web APIs, built from small, defined pieces called resources.
- HL7 (Health Level Seven)The standards body behind major health data standards, and the common name for its Version 2 messages that hospital systems use to exchange data.
- PHI (protected health information)Health information that can identify a person and is created or held by a HIPAA covered entity or its business associate.
- Offline-firstA way of building apps so they work fully without a network connection, saving changes on the device and syncing them when a connection returns.
