Comprehensive graphic-based display of clinical pathology laboratory data.

Abstract

In this age of ever-increasing demands for and uses of patient data, technologic advancements in the form of electronic patient records permit improved data access and prompt retrieval of higher quality patient care data, with more versatility in display, facilitating the integration of information concerning patients over time and between settings of care, which is in turn more accessible for use by practitioners and provides more efficient and effective decision support in areas of patient care. The graphic display of laboratory data is central to the evolving computerized patient record and needs to be taken into careful consideration along with clinician perception and ease of data interpretation in redesigning the graphic reporting of numeric clinical pathology laboratory data. An ideal system should generate user-friendly, graphic-based comprehensive reports highlighting abnormalities with trends for diagnosis, clinical management, and risk-factor detection.