title: Developing an electronic health record (EHR) for methadone treatment recording and decision support.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  In this paper, we give an overview of methadone treatment in Ireland and outline the rationale for designing an electronic health record (EHR) with extensibility, interoperability and decision support functionality. Incorporating several international standards, a conceptual model applying a problem orientated approach in a hierarchical structure has been proposed for building the EHR.
  
  
  METHODS
  A set of archetypes has been designed in line with the current best practice and clinical guidelines which guide the information-gathering process. A web-based data entry system has been implemented, incorporating elements of the paper-based prescription form, while at the same time facilitating the decision support function.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The use of archetypes was found to capture the ever changing requirements in the healthcare domain and externalises them in constrained data structures. The solution is extensible enabling the EHR to cover medicine management in general as per the programme of the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The data collected via this Irish system can be aggregated into a larger dataset, if necessary, for analysis and evidence-gathering, since we adopted the openEHR standard. It will be later extended to include the functionalities of prescribing drugs other than methadone along with the research agenda at the HRB Centre for Primary Care Research in Ireland.
authors.affiliation: HRB Centre for Primary Care Research, Department of General Practice, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Gráinne
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cousins
authors.forename: Brenda
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Courtney
authors.forename: Lucy
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hederman
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fahey
authors.forename: Borislav D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Dimitrov
mesh_terms: D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D004360:Drug Therapy, Computer-Assisted; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards; D017050:Episode of Care; D006801:Humans; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000379:methods; D008691:Methadone / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D012660:Semantics; D039061:Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine; D014584:User-Computer Interface
chemical_list: D008691:Methadone