For the record
There's a major electronic medical records conference going on in London right now. Lots of talk of handheld devices, and using XML with medical ontologies, but usability and ease of learning have yet to really make it onto the medical informatics agenda.

While the critical issue in implementing these systems is how to get doctors to use the computer all the time - rather than paper - when they are with the patient (you can't have a 'part-time' drug administration system), doctors, nurses and other clinicians will not use systems that they find unwieldy and overly complex, particularly where they see no benefit for themselves. Conference organiser Peter Waegemann is clear that reducing information recording time is not a benefit that can be derived by switching from paper to electronic records: input times are typically 50% greater, a figure that may be an underestimate if the results from this year's Southend Hospital study are anything to go by (100% increase in drug administration times).