Integrating health care with information technology: knitting patient information through networking.

This article discusses the importance of integrating health care with information technology to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation of health care institutions. It is argued that in addition to networking and the selection of a distributed client/server architecture that conforms to open systems protocols, the adoption of standards and the establishment of a management technology infrastructure would provide the necessary steps and mechanisms to allow for a smoother transition to greater sophistication in the development of total systems integration.