Electronic Health Records: From the Management of Patients to the Research Use of Clinical Data

Paper based medical records are still widespread in Italian hospitals and the workflow to manage outpatients’ visits is critical. Too many isolated software programs coexist in hospital wards and cause confusion and disorganization. A computerized medical record that unifies all the data contained in the various applications should be of fundamental importance in supporting physician’s daily activities. Moreover, with the digital clinical record, data can be re-used for research purposes. The aim of this project is to create a web application for the management of outpatient visits to the Infectious Diseases Unit of the San Martino Hospital in Genoa. In order to orchestrate all the software programs acting in the visit workflow, a client application was developed to speed up the work of the medical staff at the time of the visits, ameliorating the quantity and quality of relevant information from a clinical point of view. A further extension allows standard data exchange between the developed application and the Ligurian HIV Network, which is the main regional research platform.