Implementation of a cardiology information system in the academic medical center, a large academic hospital

The authors are implementing Apollo, a Cardiology Local Information System (LIS), in the department of Cardiology. Since the authors' HIS does not accommodate the information requirements of the cardiologist, most cardiology subspecialisms presently use custom-built stand-alone systems, built on widely divergent platforms. The department of Cardiology has opted for buying a Cardiology LIS, rather than designing one from scratch. The authors formulated the following requirements. (1) the application should run (under MS-Windows together with the MS-Office suite) on standard PC's and workstations. (2) The software must be adaptable to the requirements of the nurses and the residents. (3) For communication with the HIS and cardiologic equipment availability of standard interfaces must be guaranteed. The authors have purchased the Apollo32 System from Lumedx, formerly Seattle Systems Inc. The first parts of the Apollo system cathlab and demographics module) have become operational in the summer of 2000.