Problems with integrating legacy systems.

The economic and organizational impact of imposing state-of-the-art technology to the large number of proprietary legacy systems operational in most hospitals requires integrated clinical professional workstations to provide flexible encapsulation mechanisms for these systems rather than reengineering these systems to this new technology. In this paper the implications of different input/output and translation models of legacy systems for their integration into a clinical workstation is described. Examples of legacy systems that have been integrated in the HERMES clinical workstation are presented as examples of the range of difficulties one might encounter. The features that an integrated workstation should offer for integrating a broad range of legacy systems are also addressed in this paper.