Summary

Objectives: In 1998, we reported a steady increase in the number of publications indexed in MedLine with the MeSH term ‘Medical Records Systems, Computerized’. No signs indicating an increasing inter-est of high-impact medical journals to publish on the computer-based patient record could be determined. In this review we provide an update. Methods: We retrieved and analyzed all English publi-cations indexed before Feb 22 2002 in PubMed with the MeSH term ‘Medical Records Systems, Computerized’. Results: We retrieved a total of 5856 publications, of which 1824 (31%) appeared in a journal with an im-pact factor in the year of publication. The total impact-score shows an upward trend. Conclusions: The results show that the earlier ob-served increase in number of publications did not per-sist in the second half of the nineteen-nineties. Since the mid-nineties, there has been a steady yearly pro-duction of publications indexed with the MeSH term, reflecting a sustained interest in the domain. However, the volume of publications appearing in journals with higher impact factors is increasing. Furthermore, high-impact journals, such as the "British Medical Journal", the "Lancet" and "Annals of Internal Medicine" regularly publish on the subject, reflecting an interest well beyond the medical informatics community.