The digitalised patient.

The application of new technologies in medicine has been the subject of numerous articles and discussions. The digitalization of the process of studying a patient is a growing and inevitable development which aims at displaying all patient information, ranging from administrative data up to the final report. There is no doubt that electronic clinical records (ECR) deliver a number of advantages: legibility is improved, prescription errors are reduced, access to clinical records is easier, data exchange between physicians and institutions is facilitated, etc. Among other things, ECR comprise a description of the individual medical history of every person.1 However, ECR is not only a computerized data registry system but an innovative change in the mindset and attitude of health professionals. In ophthalmology, bringing together the increasingly abundant tests allows us to reach a diagnostic precision which was unthinkable just a few years ago. We have at our fingertips OCT, corneal topography, campimetry, among others, virtually “all the clinical data” we need to assess the patient. Increasingly, anamnesis and previous examinations are carried out by an optician who records data on the computer, besides which the system requires us to fill in a number of fields. ECR has changed the focus of our attention from the patient to the screen, which has now become the object of our interest, or at least so it seems. ECR might have brought up a dilemma: do we focus on the patient or on the screen? In fact, is it actually necessary to look at the patient?