ABC of health informatics: Referral or follow-up?

Achieving effective data transfer and electronic continuity of care between different parts of a health service is not essentially a technical challenge, rather it is a cultural and political one. It is largely about reconfiguring workflow. In 2004, the Veterans Health Administration showed that integrating clinical records across geographically and clinically diverse sites is feasible and valuable. Linking individual electronic patient records from different locations into a single electronic health record will probably transform the quality of health services over the next decade.