NIH Clinical Center Medical Information System Development collection

Original Impact Study report that helped to justify the system; original RFP; procurement documents involved in the acquisition of the original commercial system; post-installation evaluation study; two conference presentations by Macks and Lewis describing the then-unique procurement process for developing and installing a custom commercial software application and the post-installation evaluation. The commercialization of the MIS software allowed it to became a model for hospitals across the country. In 1973, Macks teamed with Dr. Thomas Lewis to justify, specify, acquire, install and operate the first computerized medical information system for the Clinical Center. The MIS system was a completely novel effort in a medical research setting and one of only a few such systems in a hospital anywhere. The core system handled charting, clinical orders, and retrieval of results for all NIH inpatient and outpatient visits. It was expanded by accretion, with the addition of ancillary systems (to exchange information with the pharmacy, diagnostic radiology, laboratory testing, the blood bank, etc.). Its data warehouse component connected to DCRT (NIH Division of Computer Research and Technology) which allowed NIH investigators to re-use the patient data for research. It remained operational from 1976-2002 when it was replaced by CRIS.