Today's or tomorrow's computer systems?

Abstract

The computer technology of behavioral healthcare information systems must meet at least twelve requirements to effectively support clinical and management operations. Existing, antiquated "legacy" computer systems often fail to meet these requirements, due to high cost, slow turnaround, inconsistent data definitions, duplication, inflexibility and the lack of data integrity. There are five major transitions that an organization's information system undergoes to realize the full potential of new technology: from monolithic to parallel architectures; from procedural to object-oriented programming; from structural to relational databases; from legacy to "leap-frog" systems; and from fragmented systems to multimedia.