How to Distinguish Double Documentation from Documentation of Distinct Data.

Within health informatics, there has for years been a general wish to reuse data instead of conducting double documentation. Avoiding double documentation potentially reduces unnecessary, additional work, and thereby releases human resources. To meet these potentials it is necessary to have a clear limitation of the involved concepts as well as a method to distinguish between double documentation and documentation of distinct data. In present paper a definition based on existing descriptions of double documentation is proposed. With clinical examples and the proposed definition, key issues for the distinction between double documentation and documentation of distinct data are highlighted, and it is argued that the identification of double documentation necessitates a semantic analysis of the registered data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]