The term anamnesis (From Greek: aná, “open” and mnesis, “memory”) refers to a patient’s medical history, in particular the symptoms experienced since the illness began. An anamnesis is an inseparable part of the interview that the health care providers conduct with a patient in order to reach a diagnosis and create an appropriate treatment plan. The entire process is supposed to be documented in an Electronic Health Record. Studies have shown that in most cases a diagnosis can be reached based on the anamnesis alone. The modern conception of Patient Journey is based on the involvement of numerous health care providers, working with partial information and with varied degrees of attention. This makes it difficult for health care providers to create and document a complete anamnesis, and to later provide optimal care.

This research focuses on the electronic health record, and sees it as the key for reflecting a new conception and constructing an implementable infrastructure for a solution. The research is based on the field of Narrative Medicine (Charon, 2001). Narrative medicine merges evidence-based medicine with the art of storytelling and recognizes the role of stories and listening to them as central to medical encounters.

The Narrative Health Record suggested in this research focuses on the doctor-patient relationship, and recognizes them as collaborative story-makers in the construction of the health record. The design prototype aims to produce a unifying stratum between the narrative record and the current electronic health record, using a platform that interfaces with the existing system and merges into health care providers’ workflow. A hybrid link between the suggested narrative record and the current health record would allow information to be gathered from the patient, their environment and the health care providers themselves, resulting in a context-enriched and more accurate anamnesis