A very large PC LAN as the basis for a hospital information system

Abstract

Brigham and Women's Hospital is converting its financial, administrative and clinical information systems from a mini-computer environment to a platform based on MUMPS and a network of several thousand personal computers. This article describes the project rationale and status and provides an overview of the architecture of the new system. The initial results of the project indicate that the personal computer network can provide large amounts of processor power and storage at costs per unit of power and storage that are several times less expensive than the minicomputer environment. The performance of the converted Accounts Payable system indicates that the architecture can deliver acceptable performance.

Building a Comprehensive Clinical Information System from Components

“…In 1988 Simborg (9) published a paper describing a standard known as HL7 for linking disparate systems. Since that time, systems that reflect this approach (10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21) have begun to emerge. We will now describe our experience with this approach.…”

Medical Office Automation Integrated into the Distributed Architecture of a Hospital Information System

“…When surveying the present state-ofthe-art of the standards supporting open-systems interconnections, it would be unreasonable not to proceed using PCs for office automation. One of the architectures to look at is the integration of local area networks (LANs) with UNIX operating systems on minicomputers or workstations, each having their own database management systems (DBMS) supporting SQL, while MS-DOS PCs are connected to these same LANs [6,7]. A UNIXISQL DBMS ensures an acceptable level of data protection and security, including recovery after a disk crash.…”