Hospital information systems have recently grown into huge, complex systems. As a result, the cost of development and maintenance of application programs has increased and become a serious problem. We have constructed an order entry system using server-client architecture as part of a hospital intranet information system in which a personal computer is used as a server. Using a commercial database management system and software development tools, an easily maintained order entry system was developed within only three months by one programmer. Since slow response when the number of clients increased was possible, we measured turn-around times when one or ten clients accessed simultaneously. Turn-around times were 8 and 10 sec, respectively. Because we expect much better performance from personal computers in the near future, application systems using personal computers as Intranet servers will be cost and time effective and easy to develop and maintain.
We developed a query and analysis system for normal growth measurement of Japanese children on our WWW server using CGI. It has two subsystems. The first shows standard height and standard weight calculated by height. This subsystem can calculate the difference between measured height and the standard along with deviation and the ratio of measured weight to the standard weight. The second shows standard height, weight, head circumference, and chest circumference. This subsystem can calculate differences between the measurements and the standard as well as deviation. Because of the low amount of output required, very short turn-around time was required. This system also allows use of the same interface no matter which brand terminal is used and has wide reusability. This system will save doctors and nurses the difficulty of looking up a child's data, then having to make the calculation. We also compare the merits of CGI and Java.
We developed an online keyword search system on a WWW server to help medical doctors to introduce their patients to specialists. The system stores special knowledge and advanced techniques of 287 medical specialists in Kyushu University Hospital. The data set was presented by the medical specialists themselves. Specialists can rewrite their data set using the browser anytime to keep their data set up to date. In addition, the specialists are reminded to keep their data set up to date by direct mail once a year. The system does not use any database management systems. We used only two text files and the "grep" command, one of the basic commands of the UNIX system. Then, it takes less than 1 sec to search one medical specialist's data set from 200 specialists' data sets. The system is useful not only inside the hospital but also for practitioners in the local area.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.