Predictive data entry in medical records

Work on predictive data entry arises out of the PEN&PAD(GP) project which is developing a clinical workstation for use by general practitioners. Recently, this approach has been extended to the hospital-based care of elderly patients-PEN&PAD(Geriatrics). The goal of PEN&PAD is to develop systems which can be routinely used by doctors, nurses, physiotherapists etc, and which will replace paper medical records. To achieve this goal, the system must be able to capture all significant clinical information. Furthermore, this information must be held in a structured format so that the system can organise the information for the healthcare professional as well as being able to generate valid aggregation of data. At the same time, experience is that the system must be quick and intuitive to use so that healthcare professionals can enter data directly without this interrupting their dialogue with the patient. Predictive data entry emerged from user centred design studies with GPs as the only technique which offered solutions to the dual problems of expressive adequacy on the one hand, and speed and ease of use on the other