Corporate information systems in health organisations

This paper presents an overview of the nature of corporate information systems and their applications in health organisations. It emphasises the importance of financial and human resource information in the creation of a corporate data model. The paper summarises the main features of finance and human resource systems as they are used in health organisations. It looks at a series of case studies carried out in healthorganisations, which were selected on the basis of their representation of different aspects of service delivery. It also discusses the theoretical and practical perspectives of the systems themselves, their roles in information management, executive and decisionsupport, and in planning and forecasting.