LUPUS CLINIC INFORMATION SYSTEM (LuCIS)

Abstract

A clinic information system is a computer based system that is designed for collecting, storing, manipulating and making available clinical information important to the healthcare delivery process.

A clinic information system has been developed for lupus clinics to replace the paper-based system of recording, updating and retrieving medical records. This system is equipped with functionalities that will lessen the burden of the person administering the patient records.

Aside from serving as storage of medical records, LuCIS also includes disease activity calculators that compute for the lupus scores based on the four commonly used disease activity indices such as SLEDAI, SLAM, ECLAM and BILAG. These scores are useful in evaluating the status of lupus in the patient. In addition, the import/export facility of LuCIS allows the integration of lupus data from other clinics’ LuCIS database to the clinic’s own LuCIS database. This allows the physician/ researcher to increase the number of subjects involved in his study. Searching based on different lupus data can also be done in LuCIS. Lastly, its SMS facility answers the problem of reducing the “did-not-attend” incidences during check-ups and lupus meetings, and helps improve the ability of the clinic to provide efficient service.

The issue of confidentiality in LuCIS is upheld since the system can be accessed only within the clinic. This makes the system protected from illegal entry of non-authorized users and corruption of data. Moreover, authorized users have different user privileges so confidentiality of the patient information is still ensured even within the clinic.