[A new concept of school medical documentation--recording health data on a personal computer]

A revised concept of health data documentation in schools was tried out in a pilot project in two districts of the city of Hamburg over a period of 2 years. Standardised findings comparable with the so-called "Bielefeld Model" are documented in an EDP-compatible school health record book and fed into a personal computer by members of the school physician's team. These data supply a survey of the state of health of a part of our population and are thus of the nature of a complete cross-sectional and longitudinal study. They can supply the basis for health policy measures if the quality of data coverage and documentation is assured. Examples illustrate the possibility of discovering regionally different characteristics on the spot; supraregional evaluation is possible by data transfer to data carriers after anonymisation. Acceptance by school physicians and parents of children examined according to this new concept is high. Measures have been taken to initiate this method in all Hamburg districts during 1990.