THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS “EMR” IN SUPPORTING ELECTRONIC HEALTH SYSTEM IN SAUDI HOSPITALS

The current era in which we live is characterized by an increase in information around us and an increase in our use of and reliance on this information in our daily lives. This is evident in the widespread growth in the adoption of the Internet and information technology as a method of contemporary management. Administrative processes of a paper-based nature to operations of an electronic nature by adopting technology in management. This means transferring documents and paper records in the organization to electronic documents. This is what is called electronic work or management without a leaf. So, the major objective of this work is to investigate the role of Electronic Medical Records”EMR” in enhancing the performance of medical administration in Saudi hospitals as well as describing the concept of electronic medical record and its importance as EMR now become the most secure and efficient technology that can eliminate traditional paper routines and transform them into efficient data efficiency with shortening time and space.After making such investigation and analysis, it is cocluded that the patient or recipient of the service from medical or clinic equipped with computerized electronic records “EMR” is preferred against the traditional clinics or clinics by 62%, while 44% of the patients believe that this is not important. In other statistics, patients' opinions were taken between two equal levels of abilities and experiences, one with computerized records and the other with paper records indicating that 79% of them chose the computer based on the traditional and the reason is the expected accuracy of this computing. Key words: E-health, IOM, EMR, HER, CMR, Radiology, Clinical and Chronological