A stepwise approach towards a hospital-wide electronic patient record archiving system

The authors developed a concept to allow a stepwise introduction of electronic archiving in a large hospital. It combines the online collection of primary electronic documents while the patient is in the hospital and scanning of the full paper patient record after patient discharge. Document management is done with SAP-ISH providing patient identification, demographic data, and the hospital-wide user administration of access rights. Documents are stored as PDF files or links to other data types (DICOM). After the patient has been discharged, the full paper patient record is scanned (200 dpi, b/w) and electronically transferred into the system. Long-term storage is done on WORMs. For data viewing the CERVYS system is used. Data volume from 1997-2000 was 208 GB (surgery and medicine). The acceptance of the system is high. Their initial experience confirms that the combination of directly transmitted electronic documents and scanned paper records facilitates and speeds up the setup of a hospital-wide electronic patient record.