Appraisal of computerized medical histories: comparisons between computerized and conventional records.

Automated patient histories in internal medicine have been compared with written medical records by investigating the diagnostic statements that were generated for both types of records by three internists. Also the intra and interobserver variability was evaluated. In addition, the opinion of the internists about the usability of the different records was investigated. To have a fair comparison, the written record was transcribed to a computerized form and also offered to the internists. Each internist evaluated in total 72 records (from 18 patients) and altogether 529 diagnostic hypotheses were generated. The intraobserver agreement was for the written record 55%, for the automated history 46% and for the transcribed record 38%. Interobserver agreement was 23.5%, the agreement between the automated patient history and the written record was 24%, between the former and the transcribed record it was 36%.