On the choice of centralized vs decentralized systems for EPR in hospitals

Abstract

We consider the problem of information management standardization in health structures and the problem of implementing and using automatic systems for information management. Although national and European directives have been defined, the Health Care system is still mostly focused on the deployment of core services (e.g. medicine, surgery, diagnostics) so other application such as ICT are lacking in many areas of Health Care. The goal of the ongoing study is the analysis of real cases regarding the introduction of ICT solutions for health-care, discussing centralized protocols (i.e. the use of a single information system for all the departments) versus decentralized solutions based on the development of single information systems for each department which is going to be successively integrated through ad-hoc infrastructures [1, 3].