Info-tsunami: surviving the storm with data quality probes.

As a result of the rapid expansion of electronically available clinical knowledge, clinicians are faced with potential information overload (info-tsunami). The use of data quality probes (DQPs) in primary care can encourage clinicians' awareness of, and improvement in, data quality entry over time. DQPs can also highlight areas of potential error or omission as well as good practice, which can impact directly upon the quality of patient care. In this paper, five specific conditions have been subjected to the use of a series of DQPs over a five-year period in order to assess and measure the performance of different initiatives on the quality of data capture and patient care.