The American Medical Association is urging physicians to implement EHR systems in order to reduce the number of unnecessary diagnostic imaging procedures they order and the potential health hazards that come along with radiation exposure.

At the association's recent House of Delegates meeting, experts said that there are roughly 60 million CT scans order each year, and anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of these are clinically inappropriate, according to American Medical News.

Using EHRs to track patients' treatments allows doctors to see how many CT scans the individual has been through and weigh the potential risk associated with another round of exposure to radiation.

Physician Adam C. Levine told the group that he had recently treated patients who had already gone through upwards of 55 CT scans. Being able to see the amount of radiation they received in an EHR allowed him to assess whether the benefits of further diagnostics were more important than the risk of continued radiation exposure for these patients.

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that up to 20 million adults and 1 million children receive excessive doses of radiation each year due to unnecessary imaging, according to TIME Magazine.