Object-oriented data management: an approach to computerized anaesthesia documentation.

The main problem of today's anaesthesia department is that it spans a multiplicity of locations for data management dealing with data on the pre-OP, intra-OP, and post-OP situation as well as with data obtained from the laboratories, the administration, etc. In the operating room itself, numerous monitoring devices and anaesthesia machines have to be integrated into the anaesthesia documentation process. Therefore, computerized anaesthesia documentation as a part of quality control urgently needs sufficient support for handling both medical and administrative data, taking into account that the user usually is not a computer expert. We will describe an approach to solve the problem discussed applying object-oriented technology in medical data management, and a sequence of technical realization steps to bring this technology into clinical use.