Healthcare information system with clinical information exchange

Abstract

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.