audioEPR: a Specialized Electronic Patient Records for the Semi-Automatic Management of Clinical Data in Audiology

General-purpose Electronic Patient Records (EPR) may lack in support of specialistic clinical data that characterizes each clinical domain. In many clinical settings often such data remain inside the computer systems associated with specialistic instruments and are not readily available to clinicians for conducting large studies for research purposes. In this paper we present audioEPR, a specialized EPR for the semi-automatic management and querying of audiological and otoneurological clinical data. The goal of the tool is to support the day-by-day clinical activity as well as the simple selection and extraction of clinical data for research activity. The realized prototype is able to support the semi-automatic storage of data related to different Audiology tests and the generation of related diagnostic reports. To encourage its use in a clinical setting its interface resembles the form of the paper-based documents currently used by operators, while maintaining the formal correctness of the produced documentation. On the other hand, its database allows an easy selection and extraction of set of clinical data for research purposes.