SmartQuery: context-sensitive links to medical knowledge sources from the electronic patient record

Physicians have many unmet information needs that arise in the course of patient care. Many clinical questions could potentially be answered by streamlined access to medical literature, textbooks, and clinical guidelines in the context of the electronic medical record. We designed and implemented SmartQuery, a prototype application to provide context-sensitive links from an electronic patient record to relevant medical knowledge sources, then performed a preliminary user evaluation. Our results suggest that such an application may be clinically useful, and provide some insight into problems and priorities for future development.