TY - JOUR T1 - General practice at the cutting edge of information technology, or failing to keep pace? JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 239 LP - 240 DO - 10.3399/bjgp10X483869 VL - 60 IS - 573 AU - Brendan Delaney Y1 - 2010/04/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/60/573/239.abstract N2 - UK GPs are well-versed in using their electronic health record (eHR) systems to improve the process of care. Holt et al report a randomised controlled trial of a within-eHR system for calculating cardiovascular risk, and alerting GPs when a patient at significant risk attended or if information required for the risk score was missing. This was effective in increasing the amount of information recorded, but did not significantly change patient-related cardiovascular outcomes over 2 years.1 This is not surprising, as we know that computerised prompts and reminders can be effective in improving the process of clinical care, and indeed may improve patient-related outcomes if the study is adequately powered.2 The interesting aspect of this study is the use of the eHR system itself to manage the allocation to study group, the intervention, and the data collection, thus enabling a PhD project to conduct a 77 000 patient-year randomised controlled trial. This augurs well for plans to use GP systems as the cornerstone of a national research information system.3GP data have long been at the centre of epidemiological research, with two major UK-based databases, … ER -