RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Communication media commonly used in medicine today no longer meet the needs brought on by the present knowledge explosion. The Heidelberg medrapid project has been developed to quickly communicate high-quality clinical knowledge to physicians. METHODS: In this paper, medrapid is introduced as an online clinical knowledge resource, and the methods used by the 'knowledge entry' function for the minimalist representation of clinical knowledge in the knowledge base are discussed. RESULTS: On average, fewer than 1.4 problems per disease arose during the input of the formal representation of clinical knowledge using the 'knowledge entry' function. However, representation of disease time processes, descriptions, warnings and graphics with the 'knowledge entry' function remains problematic. CONCLUSIONS: The 'knowledge entry' function allows fast formal representation of clinical knowledge (<14 minutes per disease) and testing using the integrated quality management system. In the near future, new measures must be found to improve the problematic representation of disease time processes, descriptions, warnings and graphics to formally represent clinical knowledge using the medrapid 'knowledge entry' function.