For US-based El Centro Regional Health Center, the biggest monkey wrench was the requirement for remote printing. There was no way to facilitate that with how the EHR was built.

The ultimate health IT dream is similar to what other sectors like manufacturing and government covet as they implement next-generation IT infrastructures running bigger, better data systems: the paperless office. Sadly, the reality is one can never completely get away from dead trees.

Secure print systems that require users to identify themselves before a document is output are a popular way of reducing print volumes and improving document security. According to most estimates, 10-20% of pages sent to a secure print server are never pulled down for printing, indicating that a large proprotion of what we print we don’t actually need.