This study aims to describe the basic features of Electronic Medical Records at the Seoul National University Hospital and Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and to discuss the process we developed and adopted the system. We also aim to suggest potential risks and success factors in our processes.

Seoul National University Hospital, a tertiary teaching hospital with 100-year-old history, 1000 medical staffs, and 1700 in-patient beds has successfully adopted Electronic Medical Records system from October 2004 and runs very well for more than one year. Our system is fully integrated with Computerized Physician's Order Entry (CPOE) and Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).

We identified that the key step for the successful adoption of the full system was to overcome physicians' resistance to their use of Electronic Medical Records and to help their earlier accommodation to new practice environment. We then found that five important success factors were the clinical leadership, adoption strategy, young doctors' participation, outsourcing of the department of information technology and the accumulated domain knowledge. Our experience shows it is important to expose young medical staffs to the change before the main Electronic Medical Records system opens and "patient-centered" was the most important concept to make these reform processes successful.

Development and adoption of Electronic Medical Records at large teaching hospital are not easy but are very important and powerful tool for patient-centered medical practice.