Defining the application portfolio for an integrated hospital information system: a tutorial.

Although many successful applications in the hospital environment have been introduced and implemented, hospital information systems have had little impact upon the daily operation of hospitals. Furthermore, integrated hospital information systems, although vital to the hospitals' functioning, have proved to be more complicated to develop and difficult to harness than expected. This paper discusses the need for an integrated hospital information system and provides a framework for the development of its application portfolio. The scope of such a system is the integration of the medical, administrative and fiscal information elements of the hospital into a unified systems environment.