Practice Research: Simple Computerised Disease Register

Since the pioneering work by Eimerl' and others general prac? titioners have been able to monitor their work load and recall groups of patients according to either age or disease. Age/sex registers have been widely used, but disease registers, particularly ones that register all diseases and all patients seen, have presented formidable problems of collecting and analysing data. The introduction of relatively cheap computers, however, has made it practical to have a simple system for recording and analysing information about diseases.* * General practitioners in routine teaching practices have been able to examine the overall work load of trainees using a manual system. But because of the difficulties of examining and sifting data, it has not been practical to monitor continuously the distribution of patients seen by trainees by age and sex and by disease. Although small computers can be bought for under ?1000 they do not have adequate memories to store all the information required for an age/sex register and a disease index.2 To get around this problem I developed a combination of a manual age/sex index and a computerised disease register.