Development and acceptance of medical information systems: an historical overview.

Computers first were introduced into medicine in the early 1950s at about the same time that they became available for uses in business and science. In the earliest years of medical computing, patient record information was collected primarily in order to conduct research that was expected to improve medical practice. During the 1960s, applications were developed that addressed the basic divisions of institutional medicine, patient care, research, administration, and education. By the end of the 1960s, developers began to integrate separate applications into what came to be called Medical Information Systems (MIS). The move toward integration marked a shift in how computers were viewed?a shift from research to patient care. The development of Medical Information Systems was part of this shift. Medical Information Systems and hospital information systems involve using computers for storing, retrieving, and transmitting information for clinical, administrative, business, and sometimes research purposes. These systems link patient tracking, census, and billing with physicians' orders to and the responses from various ancillary services (e.g., laboratory, pharmacy, dietary) as well as with clinical care information such as nurses' notes. Development of such systems began in the 1950s, both commercially and in academic institutions. Generally, commercial hospital information systems are