Description

The first article in this series (CME Bulletin Respiratory Medicine 1998;1:4) emphasised the central role of information management in clinical medicine. It illustrated that medical information is useful if it is valid, relevant and easy to access at the time of decision . This evaluation has raised the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) to the status of the Holy Grail of the Medical Information Community. There will be another presence at every consultation between the patient and a health professional-or, in some scenarios, the health professional is redundant. The Visual Display Unit (VDU) will show a record of the patient’s medical history, past and present. Advice on the underlying disorders possibly causing the patient’s present symptoms and signs, linked to any clues from the patient’s past history, will be given. A set of investigations ranked to give the fastest possible route to the most likely disorders will be suggested