TOTAL RECALL™ and TOTAL CONTROL™ in the Specialty Care Unit: A Database for the Science, Practice, and Business of Medicine

Abstract TOTAL RECALL™ is a computerized clinical database based upon the critical information contained in physicians' and nurses' notes. The input of information is essentially freeform, but follows certain user-defined regularities. Printouts from TOTAL RECALL™ include daily notes, prescriptions, orders, summaries, and H&P's. TOTAL CONTROL™ provides other reports on the information stored by TOTAL RECALL™. It can search for and translate textual entries according to a user-defined dictionary, and create a variety of output, such as bills, schedules, and quality assurance and research reports. Both programs are written in the C programming language on the IBM personal computer and use the MDBS-III database routines. In the ICU and Dialysis unit, nursing notation has been performed through the HX-20 battery powered computer, using TOTAL RECALL™. The acceptance of this method of notation has been quite good, and the clerity and professional appearance of the notes have been valued. Once clinical data, transferred from an HX-20 to an IBM XT, is merged into TOTAL CONTROL's data base, kinetic analyses and hemodynamic calculations can be performed. The TOTAL RECALL™ database accepts notational entry by both physician and nurse, and is designed to manage medicine's scientific, clinical, and business information.