Images and Data Integration in the Healthcare Information System
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
At Sacred Heart University Hospital a strategic decision was made to integrate clinical, administrative and directional information in a shared and reliable data structure called ‘Enterprise Repository’. An open environment combines multi-vendor and multi-technology applications integrated through a unique open and standard platform. The architectural principle incorporates three different viewpoints: the enterprise, the informational and the computational viewpoint. Seven clusters of objects have been identified in the information model of the middleware, each of them responsible for organizing and storing the information necessary for supporting the users’ activities identified in the enterprise view. The goal of an integrated IT-systems can be achieved by a standardized system architecture. It is important to accurately define how the HIS, RIS and PACS work together. In addition, a good archive architecture (SAN) should be defined for all types of data, because the amount of stored information will increase considerably in future years.
Riccardo Ceccarelli, Information Systems Manager, Agostino Gemelli Hospital, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome