Abstract
Obstetric services have long recognized the need for ongoing evaluation of their experiences. Manual »departmental statistics« systems sufficed, but with the advent of more sophisticated care, perinatal re-gionalization and increased research activity, the potential usefulness of computer technology became obvious. At Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, a laboratory computer based patient information file system was designed and implemented beginning in 1974. Over the succeeding six years, data have been collected and stored for all delivered pregnancies. There are now over 61,000 files for more than 20,000 consecutively delivered patients. The system provides over 40,000 clinical reports per year. However, the use of a file-oriented system has limited our ability to respond to specific research queries. The application of a relational database management system, INGRES, for perinatal information is reported here. Examples of its use for efficiently »answering questions« are presented, as are guidelines for the development and implementation of computer-based perinatal record systems.
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