title: Designing an anaesthesia data management system for a medium size country hospital. A report of four years experiences.
abstract: By the end of 1990 the anaesthesia department of the Offenburg hospital, a 500 bed hospital, started to install a data management system in the main operating theatres. In a first phase, 23 PCs were installed in 7 induction rooms and 7 theatres as well as in the 9-bed recovery-room. All PCs are connected via ethernet to a VAX-server. The main functions of the system may be summarized as follows: 1) On-line data acquisition from the patient monitor and from the anaesthesia machine (the ventilator); 2) Off-line data entry of other variables including drugs, fluids and postop. orders as well as demographic and administrative data; 3) Data transfer from induction room to theatre and from theatre to the recovery room; 4) Printout of an automatic anaesthesia record at the end of each case--a hand-written protocol no longer required; 5) Storage of data-files on the VAX-server with possibility of reviewing individual cases and also of performing all types of statistical analysis. The set-up of the whole system including 12 ICU beds and other workstations (total of 42 PC-stations) is described as well as hard- and software used. Problems encountered during installation of hardware and experiences during implementation of software are briefly discussed. A short overview is given concerning future development.
authors.affiliation: Anästhesie-Abteilung, Kreiskrankenhaus, Offenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hansert
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D003628:Database Management Systems / Q000639:trends; D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D005858:Germany; D006746:Hospital Bed Capacity, 500 and over; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000639:trends; D006780:Hospitals, Rural / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014584:User-Computer Interface