Introduction

Patient care has become increasingly complex with the widespread use of advanced technologies in routine care. Healthcare providers must keep track of a staggering amount of information -- and their failure to do so can have a detrimental effect on patient care. Clinical Information System (CIS) is a solution to this dilemma. CIS is designed to bring the management of patient data into the information age. It is intended to replace the Medical Records Department of a medical institution, supporting the acquisition, storage, manipulation, and distribution of clinical information throughout the organization.

Clinical information systems consist of information technology that is applied at the point of clinical care. They include electronic medical records, clinical data repositories, decision support programs (such as clinical guidelines and drug interaction checking), handheld devices for collecting data and viewing reference material, imaging modalities and communication tools such as electronic messaging systems.

Increasingly, care is provided in multiple settings thus creating a need for clinicians to share data with providers at other locations and to pool them with other clinical data in order to provide a complete picture of an individual patient. Advances in computer networking and wireless communication technology have now made it possible for clinicians to access these data from any location whether it is in the office, the hospital, at home, or even when traveling out of town.