A validated health questionnaire has been used for the documentation of a patient's history (826 items) and of the findings from physical examination (591 items) in our clinical ward for 25 years.

This computerized patient record has been completed in EUCLIDES code (CEN TC/251) for laboratory tests and an ATC and EAN code listing for the names of the drugs permanently required by the patient.

In addition, emergency data were also included on an EEPROM chipcard with a 24 kb capacity.

The program is written in FOX-PRO language.

A group of 5000 chronically ill in-patients received these cards which contain their health data.

For security reasons the contents of the smart card is only accessible by a doctor's PIN coded key card.

The personalization of each card was carried out in our health center and the depersonalized alphanumeric data were collected for further statistical evaluation.

This information served as a basis for a real need assessment of health care and for the calculation of its cost.

Code-combined with an optical card, a completely paperless electronic patient record system has been developed containing all three information carriers in medicine : Texts, Curves and Pictures.