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To explore the informatic requirements in the home care of chronically ill patients.

Clinical decision making is driven by information in the form of patient data and clinical knowledge. Currently prevalent systems used to store and retrieve this information have high failure rates, which can be traced to well-established system constraints. The authors use an industrial process model of clinical decision making to expose the role of these constraints in increasing variability in the delivery of relevant clinical knowledge and patient data to [...]

We evaluate the ability of a microcomputer program (Automatch) to link patient records in our hospital's database (N = 253,836) with mortality files from California (N = 1,312,779) and the U.S. Social Security Administration (N = 13,341,581). We linked 96.5% of 3,448 in-hospital deaths, 99.3% for patients with social security numbers. None of 14,073 patients known to be alive (because they were subsequently admitted) was linked with California deaths, and [...]

The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Standard specifies a non-proprietary data interchange protocol, digital image format, and file structure for biomedical images and image-related information. The fundamental concepts of the DICOM message protocol, services, and information objects are reviewed as background for a detailed discussion of the functionality of DICOM; the innovations and limitations of the Standard; and the impact of various DICOM features on information system users [...]

The domain of medical imaging is anatomy. Therefore, anatomic knowledge should be a rational basis for organizing and analyzing images. The goals of the Digital Anatomist Program at the University of Washington include the development of an anatomically based software framework for organizing, analyzing, visualizing and utilizing biomedical information. The framework is based on representations for both spatial and symbolic anatomic knowledge, and is being implemented in a distributed architecture [...]

The eighth annual workshop of the IAIMS Consortium was devoted to exploring how information technology might provide the tools to allow health care practices to compete in the new health care environment while maintaining independence. The options that were discussed included: optimizing care of the patient in the local setting; reducing practice overhead by improving efficiency and effectiveness; and finding innovative strategies for providing health care and new products.

The Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) program promotes an integrated approach to information management within a medical center. Since the IAIMS program was conceived, many of the initial IAIMS technologic needs have been quite widely achieved or are planned for implementation in many medical centers. At the same time, the IAIMS frontier is being steadily pushed to new issues that need to be addressed to achieve the full power [...]

In general, there is agreement that robust integrated information systems are the foundation for building successful regional health care delivery systems. Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) institutions that, over the years, have developed strategies for creating cohesive institutional information systems and services are finding that IAIMS strategies work well in the even more complex regional environment. The key elements of IAIMS planning are described and lessons learned are discussed [...]