Integrated access to function test results from within a cardiology information system

A dedicated cardiology information system (CARIS) has been developed in our department to record all information pertaining to studies performed in the cathlab and pacemaker lab. However, information stored in other systems in the cardiac function lab was not available in CARIS. This includes ECGs (rest ECGs, stress ECGs and Holter ECGs), and reports from echo studies and stress ECG studies. Data obtained from these functional studies are stored in various database systems. For each of these systems a different, dedicated interface was developed to allow the cardiologist to obtain access to the data from within CARIS. These results show that integration of all information available in the cardiology department is feasible. Presently, we are developing a completely new version of CARIS that will allow optimal integration of cardiology based information (as well as in the CARIS database, as in separate systems) with data in the hospital information system.