DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR CARDIAC SURGERY

A clinical information system is under development at "G. Pasquinucci" Hospital in Massa, the section of CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology, specialised in cardiac surgery (adult and pediatric). This system is fully integrated with the Hospital Information System, set up at the head of our institute in Pisa. Systems already developed in Pisa were adapted and extended for use in Massa and new ones were developed particularly for cardiac surgery and pediatric cardiology. Anesthesia information system was set up for recording on-line data in the Operating Room (OR) during cardiac surgery interventions. Use of resources was also annotated for assessing the cost of each operation. Operation data were transferred into the hospital clinical database, creating surgery reports in the medical record and filling in standardized clinical registers. Since 2000 until February 2004 a total of 2675 adult and 1106 pediatric cardiac surgery operations were recorded and characterized. Follow-up was also performed for outcome assessment. Register data were provided regularly to international and national standard databases aimed at health care evaluation and multicenter comparison.