One of the most powerful and useful new features in version 4.1 is Template Auto-Merging, which is made possible by assigning Template Topics. The program automatically inserts Templates into your note when you simply type in "Chief Complaint:" or "CC:" at the beginning of your note, followed by one or more complaints. The program looks for these complaints in your Template Topics and merges together the relevant Templates into the Writer. This merging results in all of the Subjective portions of each Template combined at the beginning, followed by all of the Objective, all of the Assessment, and all of the Plan sections. Furthermore, within each of these sections, any subsection headings are merged together, and any duplicate lines are removed. For example, if you have a LUNGS: section in two different Templates under the Objective section, these two LUNGS: lines appear together, but if they are identical, only one of them appears. The program actually looks at these by paragraphs (separated by carriage returns), so a LUNGS: paragraph that extends for longer than one line is kept intact and then combined with the other LUNGS: paragraph.

Let's see how this works by writing a couple of simple Templates and assigning them topics:

1. Press Libraries\Templates\Add.

8. Type in the text of the Template. The sample shown here makes liberal use of Template Wordlists for the various parts of the Template to minimize typing later.

20. Note, too that any merged Template material is displayed in blue in the Writer, to highlight to you the new material that has been added into the Writer for you to address.

21. Finally, note that you can also merge additional Templates into your note at any time (not just when writing a Chief Complaint) by simply pressing <Alt-T>emplate\Import, selecting a Template from the list, and pressing Merge. Merge is different from <Alt-T>emplate\Append, which puts your selected Template at the end of the Writer, and <Alt-T>emplate\Import\Ok, which puts your selected Template into the Writer at the current cursor position (which could well be somewhere in the middle of your document). Merge sprinkles the text of the Template throughout the Writer so that its Subjective is in the Subjective portion of the document, etc. In order for merging to work, therefore, you must write your Templates with Subjective:, Objective:, Assessment:, and Plan: (or S:, O:, A:, and P:) labels, which is what the merge function looks for when combining text together.

We have revised our web site to provide you with more information in a more user-friendly format. Check it out at www.emirj.com. You can see information about Welford Chart Notes at www.emirj.com/WelfordChartNotes.html.

MEDCOM Information Systems will be displaying Welford Chart Notes at the annual meeting of the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine in Philadelphia, April 11-13, 2002. Come see our newest features and meet Dr. Welford and others from MEDCOM.

This month we are releasing the April, 2002 Quarterly Update. The update includes new medications, diagnostic terms, drug interactions, drug dosing information, spelling words, drug-disease Alerts, Web Links, and dozens of new patient education brochures. This update has over 5300 drug interactions with over 2000 references, over 10,500 Alerts, over 9600 Web Links, and over 1100 Brochures, including new or revised Brochures on dozens of topics including alcoholic hepatitis, blepharospasm, enuresis, normal pressure hydrocephalus, peripheral neuropathy, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, somnambulism, spasmodic torticollis, transient global amnesia, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, nateglinide, nesiritide, tenofovir, tramadol-acetaminophen, valdecoxib, valganciclovir, zoledronic acid, and many others.

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