Role of database in healthcare IT

As with any domain, healthcare IT domain does rely heavily on databases to store, manage, retrieve and maintain its information. Lets take a look at different areas of healthcare IT and role of database in every area: 1) PACS - Picture archive and communication systems do take care of digitizing the medical information of patients including scans, x-ray, ultrasound records to name a few. PACS systems receive order from patient information system that can be hospital information system aka HIS, radiology information system also called RIS, Electronic medical record system popularly referred to as EHR/EMR. The radiologists do perform procedure which can be taking -ray, performing ultrasound etc, digitize the information captured using DICOM[Digital Communication And Imaging] standard, store it digitally in databases the information store. Once the physicians need to read the patient data, they pull it from PACS 2) HIS/RIS/EHR/EMR -  All these systems called by fancy acronyms refer to systems that are involved in creation of patient orders/information . They form the first point of patient visit. Also, to track the visits and studies they come handy. All these catch the information from patients and store it in digital format in database 3) HIE - The fastest growing sector in healthcare IT the Health Information Exchange performs the transfer of patient information across physicians, hospitals and store data, share and distribute it.