The anaesthetic report: custom-made printouts from anaesthesia-information-management-systems using extensible stylesheet language transformation

Abstract

Today many anaesthetic departments use electronic Anaesthesia-Information-Management-Systems (AIMS). Although these systems retain clinical information electronically, a printed report is still essential for a systematic patient-handover and as a part of the patient's records. As the printouts produced by common AIMS usually do not fit in the department's document system, we searched for a method to generate our own automatic anaesthetic reports. As the AIMS we use provides all data in XML-format (Extensible Markup Language), we designed a postoperative report using Extensible Stylesheet Language-Transformation (XSLT). The result was encouraging enough to develop further applications for this platform. These are demonstrated in the present paper. XSLT proved to be a very satisfactory technique to create different printouts and is therefore a feasible technique to enhance any AIMS. As XML turns out to be one of the most important formats for medical data, we call for the development of an international anaesthetic XML-standard and its adoption to AIMS.