A Document Processing Architecture for Electronic Medical Records

Indicates that the development of an electronic medical record system requires an in-depth analysis of the clinical workplace and of the character and uses of the medical record. Although medical charts have a basic, orderly outline, they are actually a diverse collection of loosely structured, specialized documents. The more critical the case, the more unpredictable the details. The authors suggest that development of a viable electronic medical record system can be achieved by adopting an underlying information architecture based on document type (rather than on data), using the logic and conventions of text tagging, as in Mosaic, the Standard Generalized Markup Language, and HyTime.