{{unreferenced, date=January 2012 Concept processing is a technology that uses an artificial intelligence engine to provide flexible user interfaces. This technology is used in some

electronic medical record An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically stored health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared throu ...

(EMR)

software applications Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, as an alternative to the more rigid template-based technology.

Some methods of data entry in electronic medical records

The most widespread methods of

data entry Data entry is the process of digitizing data by entering it into a computer system for organization and management purposes. It is a person-based process and is "one of the important basic" tasks needed when no machine-readable version of the inf ...

into an EMR are templates, voice recognition,

transcription Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...

, and concept processing.

Templates

The

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

selects either a general, symptom-based or diagnosis-based template pre-fabricated for the type of case at that moment, making it specific through use of forms, pick-lists, check-boxes and free-text boxes. This method became predominant especially in

emergency medicine Emergency medicine is the medical speciality concerned with the care of illnesses or injuries requiring immediate medical attention. Emergency physicians (often called “ER doctors” in the United States) continuously learn to care for un ...

during the late 1990s.

Voice recognition

The physician dictates into a computer voice recognition device that enters the data directly into a free-text area of the EMR.

Transcription

The physician dictates the case into a recording device, which is then sent to a transcriptionist for entry into the EMR, usually into free text areas.

concept processing

Based on

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

technology and

Boolean logic In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denoted 1 and 0, whereas in ...

, concept processing attempts to mirror the mind of each physician by recalling elements from past cases that are the same or similar to the case being seen at that moment.

How concept processing works

For every physician the bell-shaped curve effect is found, representing a frequency distribution of case types. Some cases are so rare that physicians will have never handled them before. The majority of other cases become repetitive, and are found on top of this bell shape curve. A concept processor brings forward the closest previous encounter in relation to the one being seen at that moment, putting that case in front of the physician for fine-tuning. There are only three possibilities of cases : The closest encounter could be identical to the current encounter (not an impossible event). It could be similar to the current note, or it could be a rare new case. If the closest encounter is identical to your present one, the physician has effectively completed charting. A concept processor will pull through all the related information needed. If the encounter is similar but not identical, the physician modifies the differences from the closest case using hand-writing recognition, voice recognition, or keyboard. A Concept Processor then memorizes all the changes, so that when the next encounter falls between two similar cases, the editing is cut in half, and then by a quarter for the next case, and then by an eighth....and so on. In fact, the more a Concept Processor is used, the faster and smarter it becomes. concept processing also can be used for rare cases. These are usually combinations of

SOAP note The SOAP note (an acronym for subjective, objective, assessment, and plan) is a method of documentation employed by healthcare providers to write out notes in a patient's chart, along with other common formats, such as the admission note. Document ...