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Hospitals and other health care providers increasingly rely on cutting- edge technology to provide medical treatments to patients, and a growing number also realize the benefits of technological advances in administration and record-keeping. In the recent past, most health care providers maintained patient records in paper files, eventually transferring the completed records to microfilm for safekeeping. Many providers now, however, use computers and computer networks, microwave technology, facsimile machines, and optical scanning and storage equipment in the creation, transmission, storage and retrieval of medical records. A fully computerized patient record system is one that captures, stores, retrieves, and transmits patient health data. A full automated computer based patient record is one in which all of the data and information collected over the course of a patient’s health care are created, authenticated, modified, stored, and retrieved by computer. Computer based records may be created using a variety of media, including magnetic media such as disks and tapes and digital media such as optical disks. The trend toward computerization of all types of health care information has accelerated significantly in the past decade