The centre was established through funding from the Research Council of Norway and their programme for medical and health science research. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology got commissioned to establish the centre in the autumn of 2003. It is promised NOK 5 mill per year for five years to develop and strengthen a multi disciplinary research community with competence from medical and health science, ICT and social sciences. The centre is placed under the administration of the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Neuroscience at NTNU.

The main activity at the Norwegian EHR Research Centre is research and knowledge development in front of the employment of EHR in the health services. The research will be based on problems that have its origin in the health services, but it also has a long term perspective for creating new basic and generic knowledge, and thus has a potential for industrial realization.