ABSTRACT
The definition of a hospital information system (HIS) is unfortunately not unique. The literature of both the informatics community and health care data processing world is filled with descriptions of many differing computer systems defined as an HIS. In this literature, the systems are sometimes characterized into varying level of HISs according to the functionally present within the system. With this confusion from the literature, it is necessary to begin this chapter with a definition of an HIS. To begin this definition, I must first describe what it is not. The HIS will incorporate information from the several departments within the hospital, but an HIS is not a departmental system. Departmental systems such as a pharmacy or a radiology system are limited in their scope. They are designed to manage only the department that they serve and rarely contain patient data captured from other departments. Their function should be to interface with the HIS and provide portions of the patient medical/administrative record that the HIS uses to manage the global needs of the hospital and patient.
