Epic Systems Corporation

Hewlett-packard Company

Charles Young

Alan Hersh Karp

Ming C Hao

Carl D Dvorak

Paul C Tang

Daniel Garfinkel

Khiang Seow

Thomas G Fincher

In a system for distributed computing in a health care environment in which multiple different applications are in use connected on a common computer network, the improvement comprising at least one clinical exchange server on the network, the clinical exchange server including memory, the clinical exchange server programmed to perform the steps of (i) maintaining a separate patient record for each of a plurality of patients wherein each patient record includes an event registry including separate event data subsets for each event recorded by any of the different applications where each event data subset indicates the application that recorded the event and event summary data wherein the event summary data is less than all of the data recorded by the application that recorded the event, (ii) receiving a first query from the first application for patient information associated with a first patient where the first query includes information usable to identify an event in the event registry, (iii) using the information in the first query and the event data subsets in the event registry to identify an event in the event registry associated with the first query, the event identified being an identified event, (iv) identifying an application that recorded the identified event from the event data subset associated with the identified event, the application identified being an identified application, (v) generating a second query that specifies the identified event, and (vi) transmitting the second query to the identified application.

Healthcare information system with clinical information exchange

An active guidelines capability or component is linked to a computerized patient record system to integrate the use of clinical guidelines in the workflow of clinicians treating patients. Many healthcare institutions maintain sets of clinical guidelines describing recommended treatment or analysis options for patients displaying sets of symptoms or for whom certain diagnoses have been made. The active guidelines feature adds an active guidelines tag to such clinical guidelines so that when the clinician accesses the clinical guidelines and wishes to follow the recommendation, the clinician merely has to click on a hypertext created from the tag which then transmits action orders, also contained in the tag, to be transmitted to the computerized patient record system for implementation.

Method for operating active clinical guidelines

A new application sharing technology that enables sharing of many single-user non-modified applications between two or more workstations. It provides concurrent sharing of existing multiple applications with no change in a distributed environment. It permits real-time sharing of distributed applications based on a fundamental window hierarchical mapping and user interactions. Control is centralized but the data and program are replicated. It is event driven with agent assistance. The new event capturing capability is automatically triggered by user interactions on entering/leaving the shared window. The event capturing capability starts when the user moves the pointer into the shared windows. The event capturing ends when the user moves the pointer out of the shared windows. The new multicasting scope is defined in a shared window hierarchy data array. This global data array is dynamically created at run time on an as-needed basis. Because this mechanism only processes user input events such as mouse, keyboard or cursor movement (commands), no output graphic data transmission across the network is required. Therefore, this approach is extremely light-weight and provides secure transmission without requiring intensive encryption. Because it is not using pseudo server interception, this approach can support DHA 3-D rendering. Also, the agent can dynamically mediate resources and normalize environment differences. This permits real-time sharing of 3-D, graphic and DHA (direct hardware access) applications. DHA permits the application to bypass the windowing server to render graphics on display. Moreover, because it is extremely light-weight, high network bandwidth is not required.

Mechanism to control and use window events among applications in

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Charles Young