National clinical portal programme: what information do doctors want?

Electronic patient health information in secondary care is often stored on different IT systems and not accessible to doctors involved in clinical decision-making. The Scottish Government will support clinical portal implementation in all Scottish Health Boards, which will present information from different sources as a virtual electronic patient record. An online survey was developed and sent to secondary care doctors, who were asked to rank the importance of different types of patient-centred information, knowledge support sources, and information to support appraisal and continued professional development that a clinical portal could deliver. Subgroup analysis was performed to investigate whether expectations differed between senior clinicians and doctors in training. Replies were received from 677 senior doctors and 137 trainees. Patient-centric information such as current medication and allergies, clinical alerts, past medical history, diagnostic test results and clinical letters were ranked as most important. Doctors would also like access to knowledge support, such as clinical guidelines. Eighteen of the top 20 ranked information types were consistent between senior doctors and those in training grades. In conclusion, senior doctors and trainees consistently want to see similar information in the clinical portal which is largely patient-centred with some provision for knowledge support.