The need to know the history of the use of digital patient data, in particular the EHR.

The purpose of this article is to explore the need for the possibility to reconstruct electronic medical data, in particular the electronic health record (EHR) as they have been or could have been presented to a specified health care professional at a specified moment in the past. The approach taken is that first the need for such functionality is discussed with attention to the differences between electronic records and paper records in this respect. Next the architectural and technical consequences of the implementation of the functionality are considered. The article concludes that such functionality is needed for medical audit, self assessment and handling of complaints. It further concludes that it is far from easy to implement the functionality. If the health care community underwrites the need for such functionality this will have a significant impact on the architecture of medical information systems and the (distributed) EHR. It is recommended that the professional associations and the governments, in collaboration with WHO, take a position on the need to be able to reconstruct the contents of the EHR. IMIA could take the lead in that process.

Integration of information systems: assessing its quality.

Due to organizational and technological changes the need for integrating information systems within healthcare institutions, has increased enormously. Although the technical means for systems integration have definitely matured, integration methodologies are still in their infancy. Two important questions regarding systems integration are hardly ever addressed in a systematic way: how to derive integration requirements, and how to check whether the requirements are met in a given integrated system. These two questions must be answered if we want to assess or improve the quality of integration of a given set of systems. In this article we present a nine-step method for deriving integration requirements from a business process model, and we assess the quality of integration of a given integrated system against these requirements. The method is demonstrated by elaborating two case studies from the health care domain.

Evolution of an integrated HIS in The Netherlands.

This article considers the 26 years history of an integrated hospital information system (HIS). The system emerged from an experimental government sponsored project in the Leiden University Hospital and is now the leading HIS in The Netherlands. The evolution during these 26 years is presented and discussed in this article with an emphasis on the organisational setting and financing besides the aspects functionality, technology/architecture and evaluation aspects. Recently HISCOM was acquired by the BAAN-group completing the evolution and bringing the HIS to the international health care IT market.

Constructing an enterprise viewpoint: evaluation of four business modelling techniques.

Business process modelling is presented as an important first step in the process of designing a distributed system by integrating pre-existing components. The elements describing a business process are derived from the ODP-enterprise viewpoint language. One of the viewpoints distinguished in the Open Distributed Processing standard is the enterprise viewpoint. This viewpoint describes the organizational context in which the distributed system to be constructed will be used. In this paper we will review four business modelling techniques and their suitability for expressing the enterprise viewpoint is evaluated.

Integrating information systems in medicine: a reference model for middleware.

This paper addresses the problem of integrating healthcare information systems, from a technological viewpoint. We propose to take the concept of an ¿integration service' as an elementary concept in discussing the problem of integration. We then propose a taxonomy for grouping integration services according to their functionality and their domain specificity. The use of this taxonomy for decomposing an integration problem into (less complex) sub-problems is demonstrated. Finally, a sequence of steps to be taken in solving an integration problem is discussed.

The complexity of transactions: a means for assessing interoperability.

Interoperability seems to be a major focal point of the activities within the Informatics Society in general, and the Medical Informatics society in particular. In both Europe and the USA standardization efforts are pursued in order to enable interoperability. However, even if the technical requirements are met, interoperability is sometimes not feasible because the message exchange needed is too complex. This complexity is influenced by at least three factors: the volume of the data to be exchanged, the functionality of the information exchange, and the communication standard adopted.

Guidelines for secure system development and secure implementation.

In this paper the present state of development of the guidelines for both secure system development and secure implementation, as being drafted within the scope of the SEISMED project, are briefly described. For system development there is a lot of literature how to cope with security requirements. For secure implementation of systems within an organization hardly any literature was found. By consequence there is a significant difference in maturity of the two sets of guidelines.

Evaluation of automated information systems in health care: an approach to classifying evaluative studies.

In this paper we discuss an approach to classifying evaluative studies of automated information systems in health care. Selected literature (76 studies) is classified according to the type of automated information system (based on relationship to the care process), the study design used, the data collection methods used, the effect(s) measured and the type of evaluation (e.g. cost-benefit analysis). First results show that certain types of automated information systems have not been evaluated much, going by the number of studies selected. Furthermore, it is observed that certain study designs (time-series design), data collection methods (modelling and simulation) and effect measures (job satisfaction) are hardly to be found in the literature. Only 10 of 76 selected studies used a type of evaluation for which both consequences and costs are considered. Detailed investigation of the literature may provide information for the development of a general framework for the evaluation of different types of automated information systems.

Protection of confidentiality in the computer-based patient record.

To evaluate the confidentiality of the patients' data in the electronic patient records designed by members of the Center for Clinical Computing in Boston, we examined the accessibility of the computer-stored medical records of two groups of patients at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital: celebrities, hospital employees, and their relatives (VIPs) and other patients (non-VIPs). We studied how often authorized clinicians gained access to computer-stored data on the two types of patients and whether look-up patterns differed if the data concerned a VIP. Our results suggest that the measures used to maintain data confidentiality at Beth Israel Hospital are adequate.

Setting the scene for the IMIA Working Group 10 working conference expanding HIS: fading boundaries.

This article contains the text that was sent to all invited speakers as a general introduction to the working conference. Besides this general introduction, each invited speaker received a short description of the intended interpretation of the subject assigned to him.

Assessment of effects and costs of information systems.

Insight into the effects and costs of information systems is becoming increasingly important. A key problem is to provide evidence which is transportable among sites. Transportability demands agreement on how to carry out assessment of information systems. In the VISTA study, three Dutch hospitals developed together an evaluation protocol for the assessment of the effects and costs of the nursing information system VISION. This protocol is based on a quasy-experimental study design allowing filtering for non-VISION influences. The protocol also included a uniform cost model. Based on a cost calculation for the three hospitals, the costs for hospital-wide implementation of VISION in a 445- and 800-bed hospital were extrapolated. VISTA is considered as a trial for application of one evaluation protocol at various sites. It is recommended to extend this national trial to a multi-national one, for instance by applying the cost model more broadly.

Retrieval from a large, integrated HIS-database through formal descriptions and SQL.

This paper outlines the realization of rich retrieval facilities and comprehensive data administration in an existing, large, integrated Hospital Information System (HIS) using SQL as a query-language and using a large collection of formal data descriptions stored in the Data Dictionary and Directory System (DD/DS). It is emphasized that the approach to enhance the access to the database is more important than the technology. Nevertheless, the facilities are presented that support non-routine retrieval. The Data Dictionary and Directory System functions as a catalog of the information system. The vehicle that facilitates the communication with the database is an implementation of SQL-in a number of appearances. It is stressed that only full benefit can be gained through a combined action of a large integrated HIS, a complete and correct DD/DS, and strong retrieval functions.

Effects measured in the evaluation of automated information systems.

The results of a literature search show that most of the evaluation studies of automated information systems are dealing with structure measures. Only 15 of 91 studies investigated effects on the outcome of the care process. Probably one of the reasons for this lack of investigated "outcome" measures is the fact that many of the evaluated systems were not in routine use at the moment of evaluation. It is, however, possible to obtain indicators of outcome measures by investigating the relationship between process measures and outcome measures. In the context of many developments, such as the trend of increasing attention to the evaluation of outcomes of the care process and the increasing costs of health care, the effect of automated information systems on the outcome of the health care process becomes more and more important. In the attempts to develop guidelines for the evaluation of automated information systems, it is therefore important to pay attention to the relationship between process and outcome.

ATIM, accompanying measure on the assessment of information technology in medicine.

ATIM is an Accompanying Measure under the AIM programme which aims at developing consensus on methods and criteria for assessment of Information Technologies applied in health care and at the application of these methods in two AIM project lines: (a) Knowledge Based and Decision Support Systems and (b) Medical Multimedia Workstations and Images. ATIM builds on, and coordinates assessments and evaluations which are planned in current AIM projects. It consists of workshops, meetings and the coordination of assessments in the two project lines. Networking is an essential element. The main goal of ATIM is to demonstrate the value of assessment to the various actors in this field. One of the end-products of ATIM will be a handbook on how to assess information technologies in medicine, with practical examples from AIM projects.

PACER: a software tool for PACS decision makers.

This paper describes the development of the software package PACER as it evolved from a cost model to a software package for PACS decision making. PACER was developed as part of the TEASS topic from the EurIPACS project. EurIPACS is an EU subsidized project covering a wide area of PACS related research. The TEASS topic concerns the evaluation of prototype PACSystems in three European hospitals. PACER allows the user to evaluate costs of various PACS implementation scenarios and compare them to the costs of the current film based situation. Its cost calculation is based on a straight forward description of costs of a film based radiology department and of PACS. The PACER cost analysis can consider stepwise introduction of PACS and a corresponding stepwise disappearance of the film environment. This analysis includes effects of price developments. PACER calculates costs and expenses for a number of years in succession. The calculated results can be analysed using graphs, tables and sensitivity analysis tools. Preliminary tests in three hospitals indicate that PACER can indeed be a useful tool in the decision process concerning PACS.

Presentation of electronic patient data and medical audit.

With the increasing use of computers to store patient data and to use these data as an electronic patient record to support the direct patient care these data now play an essential role in the care process. Such a role can be expected to expand in the years to come. It is widely recognised that such use of data for direct support of patient care increases the need for security (in particular integrity and availability). However, until now little attention has been paid to the requirements for the system from the point of view of medical audit. If the data retrieved may play an important role in the care process it is important to be able to judge whether the health care professional has acted properly in view of the electronic information that was (or could have been) at his disposal. During one of the IMIA working conferences this issue was identified. In this paper the issue is explored further. Both requirements and technical consequences are discussed.

Challenges and opportunities for technology assessment in medical informatics. Case study: PACS.

In this paper the basic steps of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) are applied in the evaluation of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). The exercise demonstrates that evaluations of PACS have been technology-orientated, rather than problem-orientated. Moreover, many of the potential benefits of the system have been insufficiently investigated. Assessment based on the analysis of the bottlenecks in the film-based system alone appears to be quite inaccurate, as shown by the diverging outcomes of early assessment results. The development of PACS has reached a state in which the first clinical experiences are being collected. This provides an opportunity to test postulated costs and benefits. Moreover it may provide a better insight into the future potential of the technology. Experimenting with PACS is expensive. Hence, we should work together in evaluation, in order to benefit as much as possible from each other's experiences.