The Health Records Association of INDIA (HERA-I) is the pioneer & primary national association for medical records professionals across the country, being head quartered at Chennai and expanded its wings across the country by four zones.

In India the Medical Records was first introduced in the year 1930 at Christian Medical College, Vellore and it was entirely an American origin envisaged by the American College of Surgeons and Physicians. At early 1950’s management of CMC in association with WHO, nominated Mr. Daniel Gajaraj, to complete his medical records graduation course in United States of America.

A Doyen Mr. Daniel Gajaraj, has not stopped his learnings with him, with profound vision of cascading the learning to the juniors and other general public, in collaboration with CMC he started the training program for Medical Record Officers and Medical Record Technicians at Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore in August 1962.

He has enrolled almost 200 juniors in this due course and enlightened with subject and wisdom. Some of his admirers and followers are Mr. S. S. Jolly, Mr. Keshava Rao, Mr. G. D. Mogli, Mr. A Peter and list continues. The learnt candidates from various parts of the country, has started the training courses, but few were able to accomplish.

By his severe intention in appraising the Government, paves way to creating a established medical records departments in teaching hospitals and from their learnt and trained Medical Records Professionals get benefitted. The learnt members on their own states started Medical Records Officer and Medical Records Technician association headed state chapters and central by Mr. S. S. Jolly and Mr. A Peter, but could not able to achieve the intended result and was associations slowly went in to natural death.

The growth of Medical Records and its professionals for the decades of 1970 – 2000 were the milestones, where the major acts like MTP act, Mental Act, PCPNDT Act and others started laying guidelines and regulations. It became the responsible of the learnt professionals to create an awareness amongst the medical records professionals in handling these regulations and to overcome the legal aspects of Medical records in India.

In view of creating awareness of the various acts and regulations laid in the country to enlighten the role of medical records in fulfilling the acts in various aspects, Mr. Rajkumar, Mr. Wilson Thaya and team has collectively conducted a National Level Medical Records conference in the year 1998 at Meenakshi Mission Hospital, Madurai. Almost 400 professionals from the country got benefitted.

On further amendment by Medical council of India in 2000 and following Medical Code of Ethics in 2002, sparked the learned responsible professionals, they united, discussed about the recent developments and they wanted to create awareness amongst them and organized a National Medical Records Conference and it is successfully conducted at The Madras Medical Mission in collaboration and guidance by Mr. Wilson Thaya and Mr. Rajkumar.

The conference was highly appreciated by peer members and it gave the idea of changing National Conference to Annual National Conference. All the delegates participated discussed and decided to form a National Medical Records Association, which will unite them, and it will be a place for them to transform the ideology and to upgrade themselves with industry updates periodically through the annual conferences and periodical workshops.

All the ground work for forming a national association is taken forward by a group of learnt responsible professionals under the guidance of senior followers & students of Mr. Daniel Gajaraj. Mr. Wilson Thaya. G enthusiastically came forward and offered one portion (One floor) of his house to be an association bearer office.

Next year CMC, Vellore, volunteered to organize the conference. Being the pioneer in medical fraternity and being the origin destination of Medical Records to the entire country, the learnt responsible professionals has volunteered themselves to make this conference as a milestone and officially announced the origin & launch of Health Records Association of India.

And the association was registered under Society act with, The Registrar of Societies, Government of Tamilnadu with registration number 74/2003 / dtd 03/04/2003 under Society act.

There from HERA-I is continuously working for the benefits of profession and professionals.

Having more than 500 registered professionals from Government and private hospitals, HERA-I has created an opportunity to have these registered members at one place to meet and interact with each other, through its MEDRECON – Medical Records Conference, Annual National Conference conducted in major cities of the country.

HERA-I’s members are spread all over the world, especially in middle east countries, hence HERA-I started its International wing. Through the international members of the association, HERA-I even can disseminate the industry knowledge of international standards to its registered members.

Also started publishing the quarterly newspapers, through which major acts and industry updates were periodically shared with registered members.

Upon a period, HERA-I understood there was a noticeable requirement of medical records professionals in Government and Private sector hospitals across the country.

Hence it started its academic wing and two full batches of BMRSc graduates got placements in renowned hospitals in the country.

Working closely with authorities of DGHS to deploy standardization across the countries in medical records to populate the required statistics. Also with expert’s discussion, the agency has streamlined the retention policy across the country. HERA-I also supports the implementation of ICD-11 across the nation.