Designed by Practitioners for Practitioners

Danny Siegenthaler, a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, has developed this Patient Record Management Solution (PRMS v.1.0) over the past 20 years. PRMS was designed by practitioners for practitioners in conjunction with one of Australia's most highly regarded software developers, using FileMaker Pro. The primary reason for its development initially, was to reduce the volume of ever increasing paper work, improve record keeping, and in particular to reduce the need for storage of files in filing cabinets in the front office.

His interest in research was an additional driver to the development of this software. Any health care professional is, or should be, interested in the effectiveness of their treatments. Searching through hundreds or thousands of hard copy files makes this almost impossible, however, once these records are in a searchable database, searching through records is easy and quick.

When conducting research, accessing information quickly and easily is important and should not be overly time consuming. However, the more complex your question, the longer it takes if you have to search through hard copy files.

For instance, imagine how long it would take if you wanted to identify all of your patients who presented with say, Migraine headaches, for which you prescribed a specific treatment, and who had a positive result. You would have to:

• sort through all of your files to identify all the patients with migraine headaches,

• from those, you then need to identify the ones on whom you used that specific treatment, and finally,

• you would need to identify the patients who had positive outcomes.

If your patient records are not stored in a program such as PRMS or other EMR (electronic medical record) system, you will spend a large amount of time on this and more than likely give up, or never start. Danny and his partner Susan O’Neill-Siegenthaler, a medical herbalist, have had several large clinics, which at times also included other practitioners, ranging from Herbalists, Massage therapists and Osteopaths to Iridologists and Yoga practitioners. Their input has been very valuable and has made this software solution flexible enough for any health care professional to use straight out of the box.