Anesthesia Information Management Systems

Anesthesia information management systems (AIMS) are rapidly gaining widespread acceptance. Aggressively promoted as an improvement to manual-entry recordkeeping systems in the areas of accuracy, completeness, quality improvement, billing, and vigilance, these systems record all patient vital signs and parameters, providing a legible hard copy and permanent electronic record. With well-documented financial incentives, as well as government subsidies, AIMS are becoming adopted at an unprecedented rate. With the goals of the federal government to enhance the use of the electronic medical record, there is an emerging belief that AIMS may soon be mandated, with more limited choices than currently available. As assessed by, and often in spite of the published evidence, concerns of practitioners still reflect many of the same concerns expressed in the editorial comments of the past.