U.S. to offer doctors free electronic records system

In an unprecedented move, Medicare plans to give doctors free software to computerize their medical practices.
The New York Times

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Can this be used for medical research?

One thing that is essential for medical research is data. A uniform computerized systemused by many practitioners, if coupled with technology allowing to extract data in aggregate form without relating the data to specific patients can do marvels for medical research, by allowing instant access to husge samples.

My wife is a physician, and usually research for her means manally going over at most a few hundres files of patients in her clinic and a few coleagues that cooperate. An electronic system that would allow doing statistics on data for research purposes would allow much bigger samples, and can allow highr significance in cases were smaller samples cannot achieve statistical signifcance at all.

Medical Data

Have you looked into the various research projects in the UK? Electronic patient records have been in use for several decades and most systems allow the submission of morbidity data to research institutions. The most common method is through the MYQUEST system - a standard message format. You might also find the PRODIGY project useful too.