IAIMS AND SHARING

The Integrated Academic Information Management System (IAIMS) concept is about sharing resources and information, and about improving the de cision-making ability of health care professionals by integrating info rmation. At Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, the IAIMS project ha s established an information architecture based on common, shared comp uting and networking resources. The institutional computing culture ha s been changed with increased sharing of information and, consequently , improved quality of information. Several classes of information in t he areas of clinical, scholarly, administrative, basic research, and c ore resources have been identified for better understanding of informa tion responsibility. Technical problems such as heterogeneity on works tation platforms and lack of universal syntactic and semantic standard s for health care information exchange still impede inter-institutiona l sharing of information.