Summary: The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of allowing physicians in other countries to access our department’s computerised medical records relating to their patients. Since this hospital is in a touristic region, a significant number of foreign patients are treated in our cardiology clinic. The study was part of a larger project to create virtual electronic healthcare records for patients on the island of Crete.
Methods: A system we have developed uses information from patients' medical records to create temporary files that may be viewed by an Internet browser. An authorised user may view the information not only in Greek, the language in which the data are stored, but also in English, through an automated translation process. This is accomplished by means of a system of lookup tables which contain the equivalent terms for, say, cardiological diagnoses in both languages. This has the advantages that other languages can easily be added if necessary and that existing or future codification systems may be freely incorporated into the design. Names, addresses, etc., are transliterated from the Greek to the Latin alphabet using a specially created algorithm.
Results: The system as designed successfully displays a patient’s medical data in either Greek or English, according to the user’s choice, without a significant delay. A demonstration version, using fictitious data, can be seen on the Internet at http://arachne.ics.forth.gr:8080/cardioS , or at http://cardio.med.uch.gr/DBdemo .
Conclusions: Access to medical records across national boundaries can be hampered by language differences. We believe that the data translation system we have developed is a step towards solving this problem and making it possible to use the Internet for access to medical records on an international level.