Current status, challenges, and outlook of e-health record systems in China

China (the mainland) is a developing country with a large population over a vast area, where healthcare services are not balanced. The Chinese government faces a mammoth task to provide health and medical services to the population. About eight years ago, the government defined its direction to electronic health (e-health). Since then, hundreds of e-health record systems have been developed, but the systems are still in their infancy. For the establishment of matured e-health record systems, this paper examines current status of China’s development of e-health record systems, identifies the challenges encountered by the development and analyses the outlook of future systems in China.