Systematic planning of patient records for cooperative care and multicenter research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for systematically planning patient records for structured data entry that can be used in cooperative environments (e.g. cooperative care, multicenter trials) in a way that enables multipurpose use and shared data entry.MethodsDesign research, formal logic.ResultsThe method suggests five steps: analyze the prevailing documentation infrastructure, provide terminology management system (TMS), provide documentation management system (DMS), plan the logical architecture, provide all necessary tools.ConclusionsThe era of eHealth enables cooperative care and collaborative documentation. This can only be efficient if a multiple use and shared entry of data is realized. The task of the medical informatics community is to plan these environments systematically especially in complex environments which are enabled by emerging technologies.