When your doctor must access your health records—everything from your allergies to the treatments you received during past visits—does he or she pull out a manila envelope brimming with scraps of paper? Or does your physician log onto the computer? The odds are becoming increasingly high that your doctor turns to the computer.

Electronic health records

This is due to the recent adoption of EHR software, or electronic heath records. The usage of EHR software by medial professionals has grown in recent years. The percentage of office-based physicians with access to EHR software stood at 57 percent in 201. This is an rise from the 50.7 percent of office-based physicians who used EHR software in 2010.

Electronic records good news for patients

EHR is actually a good thing for patients. With electronic documents, doctors are much less likely to lose information and can access your documents more quickly. No more shuffling through papers. With the touch of a button, they can now get all of your information, which gives doctors more hours to spend with patients and shortens the length of time patients have to wait.

Federal government encouragement

The government is even behind the movement to digital documentation. The government is also pushing physicians to file their prescription information electronically instead of by hand. This, too, seems sensible; pharmacists tend to make prescription medication mistakes when they’re endeavoring to read the often-incomprehensible handwriting of doctors. If they can access prescriptions electronically through their computers, the possibility of mistakes falls considerably.

Smartphones have made it less complicated to digest the news, find that new Thai restaurant, and connect with associates. They’ve also made it simpler to irritate people, too. That’s the downside of smartphones: They’re so addictive that they encourage undesirable habits that we’d otherwise rarely tolerate in others. Below are several of the most bothersome habits of smartphone users. As the saying goes, admitting that you have a problem is the first step in solving that problem. Are you guilty of any of the bad habits listed here? If so, knock it off.

Texting and driving

The most troublesome smartphone habit isn’t just annoying: It is also deadly. Too many people text and drive at the same time, even though doing this is against the law in most states. If you’re guilty of this sin, think about this fact: Texting and driving often leads to fatal accidents. You may not only hurt yourself; you might kill another individual. So, if you can’t resist your cell phone while driving, do the smart thing and shut it off. Then you won’t be inclined to make a possibly deadly mistake.

Paying more attention to your phone than your friends

Have you ever seen people eating dinner together but both of them are on their smartphones? This practice is very annoying for individuals. When you make plans with your friends and family, the purpose is to spend quality time with them, right? How can you do that if you are checking your email the entire time or texting? Remember how you have felt when you have been in the midst of a discussion and a friend has answered a text? Maybe you felt less important. Unless you want your companions to feel this way, avoid your phone when out with them.

Noisy keyboards

When you type your text messages, does your phone spit out a series of beeps, boops, and clicks? If so, you need to turn the sound off on your keyboard. No one around you really wants to hear you typing away the text version of “War and Peace.” So turn off that keyboard sound. The people around you in the checkout line, next to you on the bus or trying to work in the neighboring cubicle will enjoy it.

These are just my opinions… what are yours?

There may be a lot of frivolous apps out there, but not all of them are. There are several out there that will even help you in emergency situations. We would like you to be prepared, so we have defined three apps that will not just help you in small emergencies, like your car breaking down, but larges ones as well, like tornadoes.

AroundMe

This app has been around for a while and is quite popular. It is a locator app that gives you the ability to find anything from a gas station to a hospital in your vicinity. You can see how this might prove useful, if say, you are in a strange town and your child unexpectedly gets hurt. You can simply open AroundMe and choose the hospital category to locate the closest hospital to you.

CPR & Choking

In emergency situations people are liable to loosing their cool, so this app is good for people who have had training in CPR or people who never have. It offers you full instructions, videos, and techniques to perform CPR if someone near you is choking. The University of Washington, in conjunction with the King County EMS, created this app to help people save lives, so needless to say, it is free.

Emergency Radio Free

This app gives you access to police, fire, weather, and other live emergency radio feeds around the globe. You can choose to only tune into the ones in your neighborhood so that you can stay up to date if there is a local emergency, a tornado, for instance, or an armed criminal on the loose.

Of course, no app, regardless of how impressive, will be able to defend you completely from harm should danger arise. These apps, though, will give you the chance to be better prepared should an emergency strike.

I’d love to hear about the Apps that you live by.