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The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 82:1494 (2000)
© 2000 The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc.

SYMPOSIUM

The Emerging Impact of the Information Age on Orthopaedic Surgery*

The Value and Promise of Patient Databases in Orthopaedic Surgery

John J. Harrast and Robert Poss, M.D.

American Orthopaedic Association
*Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Orthopaedic Association, Sun Valley, Idaho, June 7, 1999.
Address for J. J. Harrast and R. Poss: Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02115-6110. E-mail address for J. J. Harrast: jjharrast@ msn.com. E-mail address for R. Poss: rposs@partners.org.


   Introduction
 
In the early 1980s, orthopaedic surgeons made the transition from reviewing patient cohorts on paper to storing patient data in computerized databases. These databases have proven to be useful tools for documenting patient care, performing clinical research, and fostering continuing education. Patient databases will play an even more important role in the future as orthopaedic surgeons and software developers further exploit the power of the Internet. In this paper, we review our experience with use of a patient database at a single institution, the strides being taken to create a registry that can be used by many centers, and the potential to accelerate these efforts through the widespread use of the Internet.

Patient databases store information collected from instruments designed to measure components of patient care. We have used a system model (Fig. 1) to consider these individual components. In the model, patient care comprises the continuous and . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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