The role of prescription order entry system is changing to the system which uses the accumulation data for a patient medical treatment from the system for an input. As the subject which must be solved in order to develop a medicine information system as follows; 1) standardization of a prescription description procedure and a prescription rule, 2) adjustment of prescription record and a medication actual result, 3) solution of the inconsistency with medicare system, 4) establishment of the communication-of-information method between medical facilities, and 5) contribution to medication error prevention.

 In order to secure the safety of pharmacotherapy, the prescription check function and the drug information serving function for supporting the drug selection and the prescription judgment are introduced. However, it is raised that the standard data used as the basis of a check is not created as a problem.

 “The prescription support window” was put in practical use as a new device for securing the safety of medication in Kanazawa Univ. Hospital. Moreover “the patient forum function” which have been introduced as a new tool which can communicate about an individual medical problem between a doctor, a nurse, and a pharmacist into the medical record system, and this function will be expected to contribute to patient care including pharmacotherapy.

 The ultimate goal of clinical laboratories is to provide useful information to the patient care side of medicine. In this context, an individual test result is not valuable, and it can only contribute to patient treatment after being processed by laboratory inspection. Currently, due to the emergence of automatic analyzers, raw data are provided more reliably. Nonetheless, the design concept of current automatic analyzers are too outdated to construct the ideal clinical laboratory information system. The development of a new generation of automatic analyzers that could enable the provision of new clinical laboratory services is the next vital step.

 The order entry system was the first application of the full-scale of the hospital information system in Japan, which has been accepted favorably these day. The Ministry of Health and Welfare allowed recording medical records on computer systems in 1999. From that new development has been expected. In Osaka University Hospital, the electronic patient record database was set up, in which records of doctors and nurses, order and processing data, laboratory test results, examination reports, and header information of images are stored. The client system has a function to collect the patient data and show them on the flow sheet. We have a plan to develop a data warehouse to analyze the stored data which are structured by the dynamic template. The hospital which implemented the basic order entry system successfully should aim to broaden the covered area of the order entry system and stored the order and processing data on the electronic patient record database, which also should deal with the laboratory test results and the examination reports, and finally the records of doctors and nurses. This advanced hospital information system can contribute to the manpower saving, clinical supporting, and evaluation of the hospital activities.

 As one of construction of risk management in medical installations, new role became necessary to guarantee the quality of medical care and nursing, from development of a system to help rationalization and efficiency of business.

 Risk management in medical care and nursing is taking section and connection in a hospital concerned, using technique of risk management, to make sure of security and comfort of a patients, family and the hospital staff.

 As a result, risk management contributes to improvement quality of medical care and nursing. Accordingly we will develop a new risk management support function which is user friendly and easy using, cooperate with the user side and the system development side.

 Recently, it has been of overriding importance that physicians practice following to Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). When the electronic medical record will turn into reality, Hospital Information System (HIS) can vigorously push forward EBM. The key factors are as follows;

 (1) to establish the digital library to get the reliable evidence from updated resorces at any time from any place.

 (2) to set up various kinds of critical paths based on EBM inside HIS.

 (3) to develop the monitoring and validating sytem for each critical path on line.

 (4) to improve each path swiftly, if it is necessary.

 The remarkable progress of information technology (IT) will go ahead with putting EBM into practice in the near future.