Introducing DoT-U2--an XML-based knowledge supported checklist software for documentation of a newborn clinical...

In a project concerning the German newborn screening examination "U2" we developed a software system called DoT-U2 for concurrent documentation at the point of care. Physicians can enter findings in(to) a tree structured protocol with management of logical dependencies. Additionally, all findings except free text annotations can be entered by speech recognition. The software system program is written in Java and uses separate XML-based modules both for knowledge and language representation. It can, therefore, easily be adapted to other languages and further documentation scenarios. We showed the high flexibility of the software system by integrating it in a completely new setting in Salt Lake City without major problems. We found that modular software development with platform independent Java and XML leads to highly flexible software which can be adapted to very different scenarios without knowing their requirements ahead of time.