Information system for biomedical equipment management in a wide-area environment.

An information system used in managing the inventory of equipment at the local health units (LHUs) of the Emilia Romagna region is presented. The system aims at efficient management of information on medical equipment and at supporting regional administrators in financial planning. The system uses 'classification files' and 'working files'. The classification files can be either defined at national (classification of producers, models and equipment types) or local (classification of suppliers and hospital departments) level. The working files are used to store all information necessary for the inventory of equipment in the local health unit (equipment inventory file) and results of automatic annual economic computations (residual values and amortisation quota file). Starting from data stored in the above-mentioned files the system can perform several procedures, such as control on data entry, economic computations and report printings. The main aspects of these operations are described in detail. Finally, some information on biomedical equipment of one of the largest local health units of the Emilia Romagna region, obtained from elaboration of system data, is shown and discussed.