Medical information systems

Article By:

Caceres, Cesar A. Institute for Technology in Health Care, Washington, DC.

Last reviewed:August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.412875

Standardized methods of collection, evaluation or verification, storage, and retrieval of data about a patient. The three broad areas of any information system—input, data transformation, and output—suffice to describe an existing system, but they are insufficient to design a new one. To these must be added the action that is expected to take place on the basis of the data output from the system, thereby defining the purpose of the system, and the feedback from such action to the system input, which places the system in a specific medical environment. Crucial to any information system, and especially for a medical system, is the accuracy of the input data, which is of more significance than mere precision. A medical information system is a part of necessary time management that is intended to maximize the amount of data and procedure information in order to make the most accurate clinical decisions. As such, an information management system must be interactive to serve clinical decision purposes.

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