MANY MINDEDThe first hospital-wide patient record turns into a landmark
IEEE has recognised the Medical Information System, MIS-I, as an official Milestone, in a ceremony held on 14 May at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California. The system was built between 1965 and 1974 by Lockheed Missiles and Space Company together with the hospital, and it was the first computerised record used across an entire hospital rather than inside a single department.
MIS-I let staff admit patients, order laboratory work and imaging, schedule appointments, issue bills and retrieve patient data. It was driven by light-pen terminals rather than keyboards, on the reasonable assumption that most physicians in the 1960s could not type. A prototype went in during 1968 and the hospital went live on it in 1971. In 1974, 60 percent of the doctors and more than 90 percent of the nurses voted to keep it. By 1993 it was running in more than 200 hospitals across the United States, Canada and Europe, and it was finally decommissioned in 2005 after 34 years of service.
This is a historical marker rather than a development, and the card is scored at its minimum for that reason. It is still worth logging. The clerical time MIS-I removed from nursing staff is the same category of saving that every later health-records system has claimed, and a 34-year operational run is a longer proof than most of them will get. What made it work was not only the computer but the decision to design around what clinicians could actually do.
Source: IEEE Spectrum