Hospital information system/electronic health record (HIS/HER) and clinical research

Abstract

For ethical reasons, planned, controlled, randomized clinical studies are often impossible. Clinical research must then rely on the analysis of data from routine clinical documentation. But research is not the only aim of clinical documentation - the first goal is to support patient care but also to fulfil legal requirements, the needs for quality control etc. The i.s.h.med. hospital information system is T-Systems' solution to these demands. This system has been installed in 20 Styrian Hospitals. In cooperation between the Medical University of Graz and TSystems, the potentiality of i.s.h.med. to support clinical research has been greatly enhanced by the development of a special research module for data selection, which has become part of the i.s.h.med. system. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.