Qual Saf Health Care 2004;13:170-171
© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & Institute for Healthcare Improvement
COMMENTARY
Drug related morbidity

Safety from numbers: identifying drug related morbidity using
electronic records in primary care
G Elwyn

Correspondence to:
Professor G Elwyn
Primary Care Research Group, University of Wales Swansea Clinical
School, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK; g.elwyn@...

The use of electronic clinical data to identify temporal associations
between drug prescribing and patient morbidity

Keywords: drug related morbidity; general practice; electronic patient
records

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The benefits of creating a searchable patient record are slowly
emerging, although it is arguable that progress has been significantly
delayed by system designs that failed to focus on overall aims. It is
well recognised that it is easier to enter data into clinical systems
than to analyse them in order to answer questions about quality, care
patterns, longitudinal trends, drug interactions, and patient safety.
Although clinical information systems have slowly evolved to provide
more user friendly interfaces, they still struggle with two important
areas: data coding and pattern analysis. The next logical step-to mine
datasets and present meaningful data patterns using visualisation
techniques-has hardly been tackled. Nevertheless, researchers are
slowly
negotiating the rocky path from clinical data to information to
knowledge.

An important inherent ability of clinical information systems is to
signal possible linkages between events: to alert health professionals
to be vigilant or to avoid . . .


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Qual. Saf. Health Care 2004 13: 181-185. [Abstract] [Full Text]