Right now, you’d think electronic health records would be the last things on anyone’s mind. A raging pandemic of swine flu, rock icons dying in mysterious circumstances amid rumors of prescription drug abuse, hospital-acquired infections still causing serious problems – there are so many other health-related stories dominating the headlines. And yet EHRs remain top of the agenda, and rightfully so.

Right now, you’d think electronic health records would be the last things on anyone’s mind. A raging pandemic of swine flu, rock icons dying in mysterious circumstances amid rumors of prescription drug abuse, hospital-acquired infections still causing serious problems – there are so many other health-related stories dominating the headlines.

And yet EHRs remain top of the agenda, and rightfully so. They play a major part in President Obama’s plan to revolutionize healthcare under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. They hold the key to hauling our health system into the future, while at the same time enabling us to make the cost cuts that will be required down the road.

We need a system of EHRs that can interact on a national level. As people become increasingly mobile, moving from one health center to another, we will need the ability to track patients’ treatment plans and ensure they are followed up correctly.

How easy this will be to achieve remains to be seen. In this issue, we talk to four hospital CIOs from different areas of the country about their experiences with EHR implementation. When asked about our chances of meeting Obama’s goal to have all medical records available online by 2014, their views range from hopeful to pessimistic.

Among the many hurdles to be overcome, the lack of a single patient identifier looms large. In our freedom-loving, individualist culture, anything that threatens to label us or make us easily identifiable to the authorities generates an automatic negative reaction. Yet the lack of an identifier could sink a nationwide EHR system before it gets off the ground. Yes, we can do without it, but the process will undoubtedly be more drawn out and complicated than it would have been.

Security is another issue. Anytime you store such large amounts of data in electronic form, there is a risk that it may fall into the wrong hands, be they those of the government, the news media or insurance companies. Although when you think about it, the old system of keeping paper records in folders in doctors’ offices was hardly secure either. It’s just that when an electronic system is breached, it generally happens in a big, newsworthy way.

The one thing, however, that none of these issues can undermine is the crucial nature of the project itself. We can’t let the potential downsides get in the way of implementing a nationwide EHR system – otherwise we may find ourselves forever mired in a mountain of paper, unable to take our health system where it needs to go.