The perception of illnesses and one’s life quality often is evaluated differently from the physician and the patient himself. Therefore, the data acquisition directly from the patient is reasonable. Often patients complete, typically in the context of clinical studies, paper based questionnaires during their waiting time in the clinic. In case of quality of life forms, corresponding scores are calculated manually later on. Afterwards, the data is transferred manually into research databases by documentation assistants. This process is resource intensive. Hence, it is not often used by physicians except for clinical studies in which these data are obligatory. Thus, an efficient method for data acquisition is needed which collects the patients’ answers electronically and transfers them directly to the hospital information system (HIS) for further processing.

We have implemented the following questionnaires in the Competence Center Pruritus (Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Münster) by using a mobile application developed by us and the tools of our local HIS Orbis: Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and for the objective of the treatment the Patient Benefit Index (PBI pre and post). These questionnaires are now completed on iPads by each of the qpproximately 200 patients per month. The formerly manual data transfer by medical staff into the HIS as well at the research database and check of data completeness is not longer necessary. A comprehensive usability evaluation was carried out and further questionnaires are continuously added to the system. The system will also be used in oncological and psychosomatic clinics.

For further information please visit the project’s website

Contact: mopat@uni-muenster.de