Practical exploration of paperless medical records for COVID-19 : Tongji Hospital as an example/ 中华医院管理杂志

December 2019 witnessed the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan city and its rapid spread to other parts of China, and overseas as well. Tongji Hospital, as a designated hospital for treatment of critically ill patients, shoulders the diagnosis and treatment tasks of numerous critically ill patients of such a disease. For the purpose of handling their medical records and effectively preventing the nosocomial infection of the disease, the hospital puts in place both the electronic signature system of patients based on a Wechat applet and a paperless medical record total solution based on the data center. These measures overcome the challenges incurred by patients’ signature on paper-based records and medical records archiving during the epidemic. On the other hand, they can not only downsize the paper-based medical records, minimize the risk of infection caused by paper-based medical records via contacts, but also effectively save the hospital of its operating costs and improve its efficiency of clinical work.