The introduction of care plans into the electronic health record

Care plans are widely used in nursing and secondary care where there is experience of the benefits they bring to individual patient care. There has been little success in translating a manual system for care planning into an electronic or computer-aided system. This paper focuses on how the care plan could be integrated into a general practice computerised clinical system using a structured medical record. In particular the concept of a 'reminder' is explored in depth as its use is seen to be critical to the implementation.