Opinion: Covid-19 will be the ultimate stress test for electronic health record systems

Just as the levees of New Orleans stood little chance against the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, our overly complex, inflexible, noninteroperable, and often off-purpose electronic health record systems aren’t ready for an average Sunday afternoon, let alone Covid-19.

As the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 continues its march around the world and through the United States, it is spawning another kind of infection: Covid-19 cyber threats aimed at individuals and health systems.

We aren’t crying wolf here. Disaster planning experts know all too well that preexisting weaknesses become worse during crises. The WannaCry cyber attack that devastated the United Kingdom’s National Health Service is a good example. Outdated infrastructure containing components with long-understood vulnerabilities are a hacker’s paradise.

But here’s the silver lining: Because the weaknesses are well-known, health systems can plan for them and around them.

Functionality and usability

The undeniable fact that electronic health record systems are designed to rather than provide optimal patient