BACKGROUND: @entity5357 is a @entity74 , the prevalence of which is high in @entity1 of Mediterranean, African, and Southeast Asian ancestry. In Greece it constitutes an important public health problem. @entity5357 necessitates continuous and complicated health care procedures such as daily chelation; biweekly transfusions; and periodic cardiology, endocrinology, and hepatology evaluations. Typically, different care items are offered in different, often-distant, health care units, which leads to increased @entity1 mobility. This is especially true in rural areas. Medical records of @entity1 suffering from @entity5357 are inevitably complex and grow in size very fast. They are currently paper-based, scattered over all units involved in the care process. This hinders communication of information between health care professionals and makes processing of the medical records difficult, thus impeding medical research. OBJECTIVES: Our objective is to provide an electronic means for recording, communicating, and processing all data produced in the context of the care process of @entity1 suffering from @entity5357 . METHODS: We have developed - and we present in this paper - Java-based Electronic Healthcare Record (EHCR) software, called JAnaemia. JAnaemia is a general-purpose EHCR application, which can be customized for use in all medical specialties. Customization for @entity5357 has been performed in collaboration with 4 Greek hospitals. To be capable of coping with @entity1 record diversity, JAnaemia has been based on the EHCR architecture proposed in the ENV 13606:1999 standard, published by the CEN/TC251 committee. Compliance with the CEN architecture also ensures that several additional requirements are fulfilled in relation to clinical comprehensiveness; to record sharing and communication; and to ethical, medico-legal, and computational issues. Special care has been taken to provide a user-friendly, form-based interface for data entry and processing. RESULTS: The experience gained through the use of JAnaemia in 4 Greek hospitals reveals a significant contribution towards (1) improvement of the quality of the data being recorded, since data entry is guided by appropriate forms, (2) easier cooperation between physicians, who share a common information repository, and (3) increased processing capabilities, which facilitate medical research. CONCLUSIONS: JAnaemia appears to be a useful tool, which can improve the quality of care offered to beta-thalassaemic @entity1 in Greece.

A Java-based electronic healthcare record software for XXXX .

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients', 'patient', 'persons'] @entity5357 :: ('MESH:D012497', 'Disease') :: ['beta-thalassaemia', 'Beta-thalassaemia'] @entity74 :: ('MESH:D030342', 'Disease') :: ['hereditary disease']
@entity5357 :: (MESH:D012497,Disease) :: ['beta-thalassaemia']
