Difference between revisions of "Computer Stored Ambulatory Record (COSTAR)"

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COSTAR or Computer-Stored Ambulatory Record was developed by the Laboratory of Computer Science at Massachusetts General Hospital between 1968  and 1971 for Harvard Community Health Plan by Octo Barnett and Jerome Grossman. COSTAR operates using the MUMPS programming language.  MUMPS was widely used in the 70's & 80's for medical applications.   
 
COSTAR or Computer-Stored Ambulatory Record was developed by the Laboratory of Computer Science at Massachusetts General Hospital between 1968  and 1971 for Harvard Community Health Plan by Octo Barnett and Jerome Grossman. COSTAR operates using the MUMPS programming language.  MUMPS was widely used in the 70's & 80's for medical applications.   
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COSTAR suppports patient registration, scheduling of patient visits, storage, and retrieval of clinical information, and billing accounts receivable.
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The first implemenation of COSTAR was at Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP), which adopted and began testing the COSTAR system in 1969 (Grossman et al., 1973).  By 1987, HCHP had installed 10 minicomputers to support clinical computing in their 9 care facilities, which together serve an active membership of more than 225,000 people. 
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COSTAR has two characteristics which made it possible to use the system in a variety of sites.  One is modular desing:  a site need only install a partial set of modules - for example, scheduling and medical record modules but ot the accounting module.  THe other is its substantial, extensible data dictionary.  The core of he data dictionary is controlled vocabulary of clinical terms, which includes the ability to associate modifier terms with primary name for a clinical concept.
  
 
COSTAR was one of the first programs that used "reminders" that were generated once a patient's profile was used.  This aided in proper observance of clinical guidelines by the practitioner [Luo JS 2006].
 
COSTAR was one of the first programs that used "reminders" that were generated once a patient's profile was used.  This aided in proper observance of clinical guidelines by the practitioner [Luo JS 2006].

Revision as of 08:04, 20 January 2009

COSTAR or Computer-Stored Ambulatory Record was developed by the Laboratory of Computer Science at Massachusetts General Hospital between 1968 and 1971 for Harvard Community Health Plan by Octo Barnett and Jerome Grossman. COSTAR operates using the MUMPS programming language. MUMPS was widely used in the 70's & 80's for medical applications.

COSTAR suppports patient registration, scheduling of patient visits, storage, and retrieval of clinical information, and billing accounts receivable.

The first implemenation of COSTAR was at Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP), which adopted and began testing the COSTAR system in 1969 (Grossman et al., 1973). By 1987, HCHP had installed 10 minicomputers to support clinical computing in their 9 care facilities, which together serve an active membership of more than 225,000 people.

COSTAR has two characteristics which made it possible to use the system in a variety of sites. One is modular desing: a site need only install a partial set of modules - for example, scheduling and medical record modules but ot the accounting module. THe other is its substantial, extensible data dictionary. The core of he data dictionary is controlled vocabulary of clinical terms, which includes the ability to associate modifier terms with primary name for a clinical concept.

COSTAR was one of the first programs that used "reminders" that were generated once a patient's profile was used. This aided in proper observance of clinical guidelines by the practitioner [Luo JS 2006].

COSTAR relied on free-text entries, primarily to allow specificity of physicians' notes. Within the first 2 years, the system had records for 20,000 patients resulting from 80,000 visits. But the free-text format made summary analysis of medical records impossible. A review of natural-language parsing in 1983 found that of 233 throat cultures for Beta Hemolytic Strep Group A, 90 were falsely labeled as normal by a natural-language processor that looked for specific strings in the free-text entries.

Researchers in 1983 urged a new system based on a series of menus that limited the data entry, in some areas, to pre-coded text that could be more accurately analyzed. They noted new developments with graphical interfaces that included "windows" that could be navigated with a new computer accessory, the "mouse."


References

Hattwick MA. Computer Stored Ambulatory Record (COSTAR) in Real Life Practice. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care. 1979 October 17; 761–764.


Luo JS. Electronic Medical Records. Primary Psychiatry. 2006; 13(2): pp. 22-30. Available from: http://www.primarypsychiatry.com/aspx/articledetail.aspx?articleid=87


John McrLatchey, G. Octo Barnett, Geoffrey McDonnell, Judith Piggins,Rita D. Zielstorff, Frances Weidman-Dahl, Ekdward Hoffer, Jon A. Hupp. Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care. 1983 October 26; 329–332. Available from: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2578353&blobtype=pdf