How computers can help to share understanding with patients

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7521.892

BMJ 2005;331:892-894 (15 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7521.892

Clinical review

ABC of health informatics

How computers can help to share understanding with patients

Frank Sullivan, Jeremy C Wyatt

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

In the second article of this series ( BMJ 2005;331: 625-7[Free Full Text])Ms Patel found a lot of material on the internet and spoke tofamily members about their health and the causes of death ofsome family members. Ms Patel discussed this informationwith her general practitioner (GP), who then referred Ms Patelto a clinical genetics centre. The genetics clinic team convertedMs Patel's understanding of the situation into a genogram usingRisk Assessment in Genetics software (RAGs).

A cancer registry was used to find the causeof death of Ms Patel's older sister because she had died overseas.By integrating multiple sources of information the geneticsclinic team could advise Ms Patel that her lifetime risk ofdeveloping breast cancer was about 30%, and that she would probablybenefit from further investigation. If Ms Patel was investigatedand shown to carry . . . [Full text of this article]