| Viktor Poluektovas
Introducing Computerized Patient Administration System (CPAS) in the
UK
“We should connect every hospital to the Internet, so
doctors can instantly share data about their patients with best specialists
in the field”.
President B. Clinton in his State of Union address on
Feb. 4, 1997 1
Introduction
It seems normal nowadays that progress in hardware development, mix
in software applications and interfaces has brought multimedia patient
record systems into hospitals' routine life 2 . Computerized Patient
Administration System is not a Sci-Fi story any more, but an every day
necessity brought to life by the commonly accepted belief that the paper
record cannot meet the demands of modern health care 1 . “The efficient
transfer, storage, dissemination and security of data and information
are the essential components of an effective health service 3 ”.
The interest in computerized patient records (CPR) initially began in
medical records and information management departments in hospitals focused
on the need to replace the paper-based system and lower the costs of
maintaining medical records. Since then hospitals have started migrating
their paper-based records to the CPR, which has the potential to transform
the work routines of the care unit drastically 2 . Reestablishing the
workplace through Information Technology is an important strategic issue
for today's hospitals.
It is essential to describe the concept of the electronic health record
(EHR) as a lifelong record of the patient's entire medical history, which
is a combination of electronic patient records (EPR-records of the health
care provided by a single institution) from hospital, community, mental
health and social service records 3,4 . Thus, whenever the patient applies
for the health service, the institution will keep an EPR and share it
with EHR, “providing dates and details of patient care, which will be
made accessible instantly to those carers who need that information 3,4
.”
When patients are registered on their first admission to hospital the
Patient Administration System (PAS) will maintain their medical history,
so that during the later visits, the patients can be found in the system
just using surname and date of birth 6,3 . The key is “the hospital number,
which is a unique code given to each patient and retained throughout
their hospital episodes 3 .”
Presently, medical practitioners are becoming more and more motivated
to adopt IT systems because of government requirements for data gathering,
societal expectations and personal practitioners' desire to “extend their
business to its full potential 5 ”. While there is still some opposition
from both health professionals and patients towards “paperless” practice
and acceptance of the new technology due to high cost, elusiveness regarding
time, hesitation of technical failure and security concerns about the
ability to keep patient records confidential on the “net”. In addition
to this problems, there are doubts among medics about future remuneration
methods as, for example, it is difficult to charge for services like
e-mail communication with patients and some doctors are worried that
computer-based medicine may undermine the traditional face-to-face patient-doctor
relationships 5 .
Despite this fact, some countries like the UK are well advanced in the
use of IT in general practice 5 .
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Introduction
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The
dimensions of the change in the UK
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The
implications of this change
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Conclusion
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References
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