HEALTH PROFESSIONAL WORKSTATIONS AND THEIR INTEGRATION IN A HOSPITAL INFORMATION-SYSTEM - THE PRAGMATIC APPROACH MEDIAS

Within the daily workload at a ward there is a considerable amount of information processing. It is the task of a systematic management of h ospital information systems to provide health professionals with the r ight information in the right place at the right time. This paper deal s with the consequences for the management of hospital information sys tems if health professional workstations are introduced as a means for this information logistic and with the experiences gained in the Heid elberg University Hospital. Health professional workstations are forma lly defined in the context of a three level graph-based model of hospi tal information systems. It is found that health professional workstat ions have communication needs not only on the physical level of comput er systems in the hospital information system but also on the logical tool level, which is the level of application systems. On this level c ommunication servers or brokers are of considerable importance. In Hei delberg there are about 200 health professional workstations (MEDIAS) in routine use.