Computer-based patient record: the essential data set approach.

The clamor for data to study the impact of care, to evaluate clinical performance and justify resource utilization is increasing. The data in demand normally should exist in the record of a clinical encounter. Advances in information technology and software techniques have provided us with tools to develop and implement computer-based patient record systems. The issues that constrain development are integral issues of clinical medicine, such as the variability in medical data, specialized practice of medicine, and differing demands of the numerous end-users of a medical record. This paper describes an approach to develop a computer-based patient record. The focus is on identification of the essential data set by infological data modeling and its implementation in a commercially available package for a physician's office.