First of all, information islands are everywhere, and data standards are absent. For many years, the electronic medical record system has been basically planned and built by hospitals, and the construction situation and level vary greatly. Different standards of electronic medical records are adopted in different regions, which makes it difficult to collect and share electronic medical records nationwide, and it is very difficult to develop and utilize the data.

Second, data security. Electronic medical record data involves a lot of important information, such as personal privacy, business secrets of medical institutions and so on. It is necessary to define the boundary of data use and build the corresponding data security system. In addition, the level of hospital information security management in different regions and levels is uneven, which may be a problem.

Third, capital investment. The establishment of the national electronic medical record system needs a lot of public funds, including technology research and development, infrastructure construction, personnel training, etc., and the government needs to take the lead in coordinating the cooperation between enterprises and medical institutions and other stakeholders, so it is relatively difficult to raise funds.

Finally, it is difficult to bridge the interest gap. Part of the salary income of staff in public hospitals comes from medical consumables and the balance of inspection income and expenditure. After the implementation of national electronic medical record data sharing, the demand for repeated examinations and drugs may be reduced, and the income of hospitals in this area may be reduced.

Information security and privacy protection are also facing major challenges:

As medical and health information is one of the most important privacy for everyone, and it has extremely high potential commercial value, it is urgent to introduce a strict medical data classification management system, as well as supervision measures and various implementation rules for data users and methods on the basis of the Personal Information Protection Law, the Network Security Law and the Data Security Law.

At the same time, under the premise of properly ensuring the security of information and data, we should formulate data desensitization and scientific application norms to support the use of data in in-depth medical research and achieve a reasonable balance between protection and innovation.

To sum up, although data interconnection is the general trend of the information age, it is still a complicated and difficult thing to realize the nationwide interconnection and sharing of electronic medical records. Overcoming key challenges such as standardization of technical specifications, data interconnection, coordination of multi-interest differences, and data and privacy protection still requires long-term efforts and arduous struggles by the competent authorities and all sectors of society.