In 2007, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teamed up to conduct a study to determine how many Americans are using complementary and alternative medicine. The results showed that almost 40% of American adults are availing themselves of these types of therapies, which is a 2% increase over 2003 usage. And, while many forms of alternative medicine have been in existence for thousands of years, the practice of these therapies has not necessarily evolved at the same pace as conventional medicine when it comes to the use of technology, particularly as it applies to the electronic medical record.

Although the electronic medical record (EMR) was a theory first offered in the 1960s, its use was not widespread until at least 2003, and there are still many practices that have not yet adopted the EMR. Some resistance to doing so can be directly attributed to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which places a great deal of responsibility on providers to safeguard and protect the health information of their patients, going so far as to impose fines for instances of disclosure of that information. Many practice managers worry that the EMR will open the door to inadvertent disclosures.

The fact is, however, that we, as a country, are moving closer and closer to the time when the EMR will be the standard, and paper charts will be archival material. This can be evidenced by the introduction of the Health Information Technology and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). HITECH is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and was developed in an effort to bring us firmly into the realm of electronic storage and sharing of health information. While HITECH is primarily targeted toward hospitals, academic medical centers, and the conventional medical practice, the statistics related to alternative therapies show a need for these practices to jump aboard the technology bus, as well.