Is Intranet technology the low cost, quick fix solution for Scotland's clinical information technology chaos? Results...

For health care professional staff immediate access to recent clinical documents is seen as the first priority for developments in Information Technology. Large amounts of clinical data are held on computer systems to which staff have little or no access. A pilot study has been undertaken to evaluate the use of Intranet technology, electronically extracting large volumes of data from various feeder systems in real time and allowing access via standard Internet browsers. Over 700,000 reports have been successfully transferred from three differing sources with more than 2000 new records added per week. Intranet technology would seem to be a low cost solution, capable of rapid implementation, that could overcome the most important bottleneck in clinical computing.