Summary
         
         
            Background: Primary care delivers patient-centred and coordinated care, which should be quality-assured.
            Much of family practice now routinely uses computerised medical record (CMR) systems,
            these systems being linked at varying levels to laboratories and other care providers.
            CMR systems have the potential to support care.
         
         
            Objective: To achieve a consensus among an international panel of health care professionals
            and informatics experts about the role of informatics in the delivery of patient-centred,
            coordinated, and quality-assured care.
         
         Method: The consensus building exercise involved 20 individuals, five general practitioners
            and 15 informatics academics, members of the International Medical Informatics Association
            Primary Care Informatics Working Group. A thematic analysis of the literature was
            carried out according to the defined themes. Results:The first round of the analysis
            developed 27 statements on how the CMR, or any other information system, including
            paper-based medical records, supports care delivery. Round 2 aimed at achieving a
            consensus about the statements of round one. Round 3 stated that there was an agreement
            on informatics principles and structures that should be put in place. However, there
            was a disagreement about the processes involved in the implementation, and about the
            clinical interaction with the systems after the implementation.
         
         
            Conclusions: The panel had a strong agreement about the core concepts and structures that should
            be put in place to support high quality care. However, this agreement evaporated over
            statements related to implementation. These findings reflect literature and personal
            experiences: whilst there is consensus about how informatics structures and processes
            support good quality care, implementation is difficult.
         
         Keywords
Patient-centred care - clinical informatics - healthcare quality assurance - computerised
            medical records - patient participation