Development of an Integrated Medical Information System “KPECK” Distributed as Open Source Codes

Abstract

　Venders provide many kinds of medical information systems such as HIS, RIS and PACS. These commercially available systems are, however, expensive. Furthermore, detailed system architectures are, in many cases, not opened for users. To construct an integrated medical information system with the commercially available systems, we therefore have to spend much time and/or extra costs to link them each other. Consequently, we have been developed an integrated medical information system “KPECK,” that has been written primarily in c (Boland c) language, and distributed as open source codes. The KPECK consists of RIS and PACS and runs on the Linux OS. The system can be communicated with available HIS by TCP/IP sockets. The system has been worked without troubles for one year in a hospital with 340 beds. The strategy, disclosure of the system architecture as open source code, in the present project is benefit for us to further development of the system: many experts in the medical fields can be contributed to improve the system. Furthermore, users can be used KPECK “as is” without costs on software including development of the base of the system.