GETTING THE DATA IN - 3-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 clini cs over the past 3 years. The implementation of the CWS built upon a s ubstantial effort in integration of data from various sources. This pa per 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 voc abulary and free text. Some of the consequences of these design decisi ons on clinical care, clinical education, clinical and basic research are reviewed with examples from the last three years.