Preface

This book is intended for readers who wish to efficiently improve the environment of medical treatment and care, such as staff engaged in medical clinics or hospitals, and vendors targeting medical information systems. Medical information systems are generally introduced to medical facilities by vendors who fulfill the functional criteria of medical information systems when each facility develops and introduces these systems. However, many medical staffs with experience of using medical information systems may feel that such systems developed by vendors do not always provide a good working environment for medical staff. Therefore, medical facilities cannot always make the huge investments necessary to construct medical information systems implementing all of the functions requested by medical staff. This book discusses ways of addressing these issues. Although, there have been many reports regarding computerization within hospital departments or personal work, there have been a few reports in the English literature concerning end user computing as a method of computerization implemented in the whole hospital. End user computing has been widely adopted in the field of medical treatment and care in Japan, but it has not been adopted around the world as there have been few reports in English. The main purpose of this book is to share our experiences regarding end user applications with workers outside Japan. Medical information systems have developed from receipt processing systems to electronic medical records through order entry systems since the 1970s, and are now shifting toward electronic health records. These systems have been introduced at various facilities by organizational computing. In contrast to the flow of such organizational computing, many applications supporting medical workflow by end user computing have recently been reported in Japan. FileMaker Pro is a common tool in end user computing, especially in Japan, and can be used in the whole hospital, between or among departments, for individual departments, and for individuals within an organization. Some end user application systems cooperate with hospital information systems, and some such systems have been developed and introduced by end users. Therefore, we selected end user application systems in Japan and focused in this book on how to use FileMaker Pro with hospital information systems. This book will provide new viewpoints regarding future hospital information systems and will offer advice to achieve cooperation between end user applications and hospital information systems, how end user applications are implemented, and the most important points in the development of medical information systems that give priority to the effectiveness of medical workflows or collection of medical data.