Computerization of clinical laboratories and health care facilities: Making decisions in transition. Part I: General considerations.

In summary, it is perhaps appropriate to reflect on the transition zone that health care finds itself in now. Federally and provincially funded Royal Commission reports and health surveys over the last thirty years have all drawn a number of similar conclusions. Some of these are particularly important to keep in mind as major investments in hospital and laboratory information systems are made. First, it is known that health care providers and services are not distributed evenly throughout the country and that there is uneven utilization of services. Second, the "health" in health care is not defined in purely medical terms. Health is a function of genetic background, personal choices and behaviors like diet and exercise, socioeconomic conditions like housing, family situations, education, and employment, and the physical environment in which an individual lives and works. Governments at all levels now use this concept of health when determining policy and funding. Third, a change of emphasis has occurred from the traditional hospital-centered model to one that is community based. How well will your laboratory and facility responding to the inevitable changes to funding and consumer utilization? How well does the HIS/LIS vendor understand the circumstances affecting your organization and what agreements can be made to ensure future system support? How will an increase in profile-type testing and reflexive testing be handled to minimize disruptions to work flow and productivity? How can analytical instrument selection change the whole focus of the laboratory operation and impact on other areas? Will the traditional terms "in patient" and "out patient" still apply, or will a term somewhere in the middle evolve?(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)