Building a computerized disease management operating system.

Under the increasing pressures of the marketplace, there has been a determined move in health care toward the development of disease management systems that improve efficiency, control costs, and ensure the best possible clinical outcome. Achieving these goals requires the ability to perform global analysis of complex and dynamic systems, beginning with point-of-care data collection and including the potential for multiple interfaces along the continuum of care. Our center has developed an integrated disease management system that enables the clinician to continuously monitor and assess relevant clinical and financial information flowing through the practice, providing robust and rigorous outcomes, health economic analysis, and pharmacoeconomic analysis of care at every step in the delivery process. This paper describes the results of pilot studies of the analytic capability of the system and includes an overview of the conceptual parameters employed in its development.