Authors:
Lucas Ribeiro
1
;
João Paulo Cunha
2
and
Ricardo Cruz-Correia
1
Affiliations:
1
Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto (FMUP), Portugal
;
2
Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Electronic Health Record, Integration, Information System Interoperability, Heterogeneity.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Information Systems
;
Healthcare Management Systems
;
Integration/Interoperability
;
Interoperability
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Semantic Interoperability
;
Sensor Networks
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software and Architectures
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
This paper presents a study of the heterogeneity and interoperability of Information Systems (IS) that exist in Northern Portuguese Hospitals. Structured interviews to each Hospital CIO were performed regarding their opinions, existing IS and integrations. The number of IS is exponentially related of the dimension of the hospital (number of beds), and the relation between the number of IS and the number of integrations follows an exponential model. The ratio between the number of effective integrations and the total possibilities is very low and follows a quadratic model, indicating that the energy spent grows rapidly with the increase of IS number and with poor results. Admission/discharge/transfer and drug related IS are installed more often, and therefore are better candidates for a regional network. Despite numerous efforts to develop standards, it seems that there is a large gap between their development and their applicability. Interoperability inside organizations is a crucial
first step, looking for the goal of achieving regional and national EHR. Standardization is vital considering the number of IS and multitude of organizations involved.
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