The widespread use of ePrescribing technology has enabled high levels of quality and reduced error rates, but one expert believes challenges still persist in efforts to create a fully interoperable system.

In a webinar sponsored by HIMSS and the National Conference of State Legislatures, Patricia Hale, the associate medical director of informatics at Albany Medical Center, said that differences in the size of practices and the scale of their ePrescribing efforts are leading to difficulties in creating a national network, according to Cardiovascular Business.

"We're challenged by variations across our country - in practice sizes, in practice locations, among insurance companies and in state and federal regulations," Hale said, according to the news source. "We still have challenges with the standard communication methods that we use to send information from place to place."

Still, she affirmed that the technology will play a vital role in the future of healthcare, which will require the management of significant amounts of data.

As part of an effort to standardize the use of ePrescribing tools, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services adopted a set of technical requirements for use in its incentive program that were intended to serve as a foundation upon which practices would base their ePrescribing use.