Systematic planning of patient records for cooperative care and multicenter research

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for systematically planning patient records for structured data entry that can be used in cooperative environments (e.g. cooperative care, multicenter trials) in a way that enables multipurpose use and shared data entry. Methods: Design research, formal logic. Results: The method suggests five steps: analyze the prevailing documentation infrastructure,provide terminology management system (TMS), provide documentation management system (DMS), plan the logical architecture, provide all necessary tools. Conclusions: The era of eHealth enables cooperative care and collaborative documentation.This can only be efficient if a multiple use and shared entry of data is realized. The task of the medical informatics community is to plan these environments systematically especiallyin complex environments which are enabled by emerging technologies.