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    3. Volume 19
    4. Software development and management of information systems. A commentary on ’Verpasste Chancen. Nachdenken über Fehlentwicklungen der Medizinischen Informatik‘ by Wolfgang Giere
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GMS Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie__Temp

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie e.V. (GMDS)

1860-9171__Temp


This is the English version of the article. The German version can be found here.
Letter to the Editor

[Software development and management of information systems. A commentary on ’Verpasste Chancen. Nachdenken über Fehlentwicklungen der Medizinischen Informatik‘ by Wolfgang Giere]

 Alfred Winter 1

1 Universität Leipzig, Institut für Medizinische Informatik, Statistik und Epidemiologie, Leipzig, Germany



Letter to the editor

First of all, many thanks to Wolfgang Giere for the frank account of his experiences in medical informatics since the late 1960s [1].

In particular, I would like to highlight his analysis in section 5 “BAIK – verpasste Chance”. The experiences described there should not be forgotten.

In the early 1990s, I myself was responsible for software development in the Department of Medical Informatics at the University of Heidelberg. And that meant, above all, for the reasons described by Wolfgang Giere, cutting back on in-house developments and putting the excellent ideas developed over the years into the hands of industrial partners. Whether this was done in time and to the right extent could also be self-critically analysed. The GMDS/GI working group “Methods and Tools for the Management of Information Systems” was also founded around this time. There we learned together that software development is part of the tactical management of information systems and that this in turn is interwoven with the operational and strategic management of information systems [2]. This has two consequences, among others:

  1. Implementing excellent ideas by developing software is not enough.
  2. The development of software can be left to industry. However, management of their information systems remains the responsibility of hospitals.

The first point in particular is in danger of being lost sight of in some projects. It is good that Han et al. [3] had the courage to report that inadequate tactical information management even with otherwise good and error-free software can kill children.

Note

Competing interests

The author declares that he has no competing interests.

References

[1] Giere W. Verpasste Chancen. Nachdenken über Fehlentwicklungen der Medizinischen Informatik [Missed opportunities. Reflections on misdevelopments in medical informatics]. GMS Med Inform Biom Epidemiol. 2023;19:Doc08. DOI: 10.3205/mibe000247
[2] Winter AF, Zimmerling R, Bott OJ, Gräber S, Haas P, Hasselbring W, Haux R, Heinrich A, Jaeger R, Kock I, Möller DPF, Penger OS, Prokosch HU, Ritter J, Terstappen A, Winter A. Das Management von Krankenhausinformationssystemen: Eine Begriffsdefinition. Informatik, Biometrie und Epidemiologie in Medizin und Biologie. 1998;29(2):93-105. URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa-148053
[3] Han YY, Carcillo JA, Venkataraman ST, Clark RS, Watson RS, Nguyen TC, Bayir H, Orr RA. Unexpected increased mortality after implementation of a commercially sold computerized physician order entry system. Pediatrics. 2005 Dec;116(6):1506-12. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2005-1287