Computerization of a nosocomial infection system

This paper describes the implementation of a computerized nosocomial infection control system for a 500-bed tertiary-care teaching hospital. It is implemented on a minicomputer that uses the relational data base management system INGRES, which is marketed by Relational Technology, Inc. This system, which replaces a manual one that depended on "needle sort" data cards, is designed to provide for entry of infection data that have been collected onto abstracting forms; decision support in the prospective analysis of suspicious infection rates or trends; generation of monthly, on-demand, and annual infection rate reports; retrospective interrogation and analysis of infection data for rates and trends that may explain or clearly indicate the sources of in-hospital (nosocomial) infections; updating of infection records as additional infection-related data become available and known to the hospital's infection control team; and ad hoc analysis and comparisons between data on control and infected patients, both prospectively and retrospectively.