The electronic health record has dramatically improved the safety of medical care as well as
the clarity and accessibility of the notes. An equally profound, but under-recognised …

This issue of BMJ Quality & Safety features a paper by Bell et al 1 that follows up on the
original 'Open Notes' experiment with providing patients electronic access to their primary …

Privacy awareness in the relationships between doctors and patients at first sight seems to
be of secondary importance. Indeed, a SwissCom CEO 1 once said that only healthy people …

In this vignette, email is sent from clinic to consultant via mail servers on the Internet; the
owners and operators of the servers are unknown. There are three loci at which someone …

Introduction and objectives Poorly kept or illegible medical records may be detrimental to
patient care while also leaving doctors vulnerable to litigation. Inconsistent data concerning …

Background General practitioners are increasingly involved in a range of activities which
require the use of data from patients' case notes. These activities include audit, evaluation …

Open, honest, and trustworthy communication is crucial to ensure the effective responses of
citizens. Paralleling transparency in the arena of public health are new practice policies that …

Purpose Ireland's physicians have a legal and an ethical duty to protect confidential patient
information. Most healthcare records in Ireland remain paper based, so the purpose of this …

The introduction of computers into healthcare, and in particular into medical record keeping,
has the potential to improve the quality of care. In 1995, for example, the Audit Commission …

Background Internationally, patient access to notes is increasing. This has been driven by
respect for patient autonomy, often recognised as a primary tenet of medical ethics: patients …