Getting the data in: three year experience with a pediatric electronic medical record system.

The Clinician's Workstation (CWS) has provided the full-functionality of an on-line electronic patient record for outpatient pediatric clinics over the past 3 years. The implementation of the CWS built upon a substantial effort in integration of data from various sources. This paper addresses the subsequent design issues which had to be resolved in order to enable both physician and transcriptionist-driven data entry and retrieval, notably selecting a feasible mixture of controlled vocabulary and free text. Some of the consequences of these design decisions on clinical care, clinical education, clinical and basic research are reviewed with examples from the last three years.