New Communication Technologies for Integrating Hospital Information Systems and Their Computer-based Patient Records

Abstract

Based on a speculative view of the next generation of hospital information systems (HISs), communications technologies are reviewed and the impact of new technologies is examined. The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) technologies are examined in more detail. ISDN has the potential to become the basis for all user interfaces in hospitals that require several information modalities (voice, text, and/or images) or all those applications that are oriented to transactions. ISDN also enables the HIS to reach out into the community and still maintain a highly secure access through a caller identification feature that ISDN can provide. Current local area network (LAN) technology is affecting the architectures of hospital information systems. As graphic user interfaces (GUIs) and multimedia systems are introduced in these systems, the bandwidth of the current LANs may be insufficient and therefore networks with higher bandwidths are needed. The fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) is a good candidate for linking LANs that are located within close proximity (i.e., on the same campus) and the emerging broadband ISDN (B-ISDN) technology, an extension ISDN into the multi megabit transmission range, can provide solutions for interactive video services. The basis for B-ISDN is the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), a novel and efficient fast packet switching technology.