Racism and Electronic Health Records (EHRs): Perspectives for research and practice

Informatics researchers and practitioners have started exploring racism related to the implementation and use of electronic health records (EHRs). While this work has begun to expose structural racism which is a fundamental driver of racial and ethnic disparities, there is a lack of inclusion of concepts of racism in this work. This perspective provides a classification of racism at 3 levels-individual, organizational, and structural-and offers recommendations for future research, practice, and policy. Our recommendations include the need to capture and use structural measures of social determinants of health to address structural racism, intersectionality as a theoretical framework for research, structural competency training, research on the role of prejudice and stereotyping in stigmatizing documentation in EHRs, and actions to increase the diversity of private sector informatics workforce and participation of minority scholars in specialty groups. Informaticians have an ethical and moral obligation to address racism, and private and public sector organizations have a transformative role in addressing equity and racism associated with EHR implementation and use.

Automated summary

Informatics researchers and practitioners have started investigating racism related to electronic health records (EHRs). However, there is a lack of inclusion of racism concepts in this work. This perspective offers a classification of racism at three levels and suggests recommendations for future research, practice, and policy. The recommendations include the use of structural measures to address structural racism, intersectionality as a theoretical framework, and actions to increase diversity in the informatics workforce.