A Clinical Information System for Psychiatry

At the Academic Hospital of Nijmegen (AZN) a project is started with the aim to improve the quality of patient care and to facilitate patient directed scientific research, by introducing standardized procedures and assessment tools that will be offered by a computerized information system. The resulting Clinical Information System (CIS) should reflect the contributions of all associated disciplines at the department: psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, social workers, and occupational therapists. One of the main problems that arised during the beginning of the project is the simultaneous restoration and development of a new general Hospital Information System (HIS) at the AZN, the Radboud Order Communication System (ROCS). Many procedures that were supposed to be components of the CIS, appeared to be components of the new HIS. The CIS should be based on the HIS in order to provide an optimal redundancy in data and integration of both systems. We studied the proposed components of the CIS and compared these with the components of the HIS in order to redefine the contents of this project. We found that ROCS provides almost all components of the current clinical practice at the department of psychiatry. However, the introduction of some standardized procedures and assessment tools are not or not fully provided by the HIS. Consequently, these extensions to the current information system are the candidate components of this project: the pharmacological treatment procedure, and the assessment tools. 1 Dept. of Psychiatry, University Hospital Nijmegen, Reinier Postlaan 10, 6525 GC Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Dept. of Information Systems, Computing Science Institute, University of Nijmegen, Toernooiveld 1, 6525 ED Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] 3 Dept. of Psychiatry, University Hospital Nijmegen, Reinier Postlaan 10, 6525 GC Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]