[Development and use of a database for gastroenterologic endoscopy].

With no commercially available endoscopy database manager available, a standalone system for gastroenterological endoscopy departments has been developed since 1985 through joint efforts of gastroenterologists and dedicated programmers. The present system was implemented for daily use January 1989 and, to date, approximately 19,000 examinations have been recorded. Nurses and office assistants carry out administrative work, but the physician enters the endoscopic data, partly as free text, partly as structured data via automated menus and a mouse. In addition to the immediate printout of the result, valuable data are stored in the computer for administrative and research purposes. Mean data entering time for the physician was four minutes 17 seconds, and altogether eight minutes 40 seconds was spent on the computer system for each patient served.