An electronic medical diary for computer assisted patient management.

The Electronic Medical Diary (EMD) is a tool for supporting the daily registration and storage of clinical events related to a specific patient. The collection of all patient-specific clinical data forms the patient database (PDB) which can be defined as a computer-based record able to replace the traditional paper record. The PDB is organized according to the clinical database (CDB), which is a structured terminology of most important clinical data, and may be connected with the many online tools (OLT) which can improve the flow of information within the hospital information system (HIS). In this paper we present the preliminary results of a project aimed at creating an EMD designed in accordance with the methodological model based on the problem-oriented approach. This EMD is patient-centered and each action it enables is related to at least one of the identified problems and one of the current diagnostic hypotheses. The permanent link of the EMD with the CDB is one of the most important features of the prototype here described. It allows the standardization of patients' data, their sharing among all operators involved, and a better organization of the patient management process.