A System Approach to Medical Information

Abstract

Most effort using computers in medicine the past few years has been spent on optimizing the subsystems, e.g., the clinical laboratory, electrocardiogram analyses, business and administrative information, etc. While these areas are important, it is time more effort should be expended in terms of a system to integrate these subsystems. Goals and requirements for such a system are discussed. An operating system capable of handling and modularly adding all medical data, for the subsystems, in a systematized and standardized way is described. The system features a flexible, comprehensive and efficient computer medical record which has the capability of keeping all data over the lifetime of each patient.